in an artillery
concentration!"

But they did not go--not until they had orders. This was their kind of
discipline under fire; they "stayed on the job." One group charged out
beyond the swath of fire to meet the Germans in the open and there
fought to the death in expression of characteristic initiative. When
word was passed to retire, some grudgingly held on to fight the
outnumbering Germans in the midst of the debris and escaped only by
passing through the German barrage placed between the first and second
line to cover the German advance on the second. The supports themselves
under the carefully arranged pattern of shell fire held as the
rallying-points of the survivors, who found the communication trenches
so badly broken that it was as well to keep in the open. Little knots of
men with their defenses crushed held from the instinctive sense of
individual stubbornness.

To tell the whole story of that day as of many other days where a few
battalions were engaged, giving its fair due to each group in the
struggle, is not for a correspondent who had to cover the length of the
battle line and sees the whole as an example of Maple Leaf spirit. The
rest is for battalion historians, who will find themselves puzzled about
an action where there was little range of vision and this obscured by
shell-smoke and the preoccupation of each man trying to keep cover and
do his own part to the death.

In the farmhouses afterward, as groups of officers tried to assemble
their experiences, I had the feeling of being in touch with the proof of
all that I had seen in Canada months previously. Losses had been heavy
for the battalions engaged though not for the Canadian corps as a whole,
no heavier than British battalions or the Germans had suffered in the
salient. Canada happened to get the blow this time.

The men, after a night's sleep and writing home that they were safe and
how comrades had died, might wander about the roads or make holiday as
they chose. They were not casual about the fight, but outspoken and
frank, Canadian fashion. They realized what they had been through and
spoke of their luck in having survived. From the fields came the cry of,
"Leave that to me!" as a fly rose from the bat, or, "Out on first!" as
men took a rest from shell-curves and high explosives with baseball
curves and hot liners between the bases, which was very homelike there
in Flanders. Which of the players was American one could not tell by
voice