“I remember no more, Monsieur.  After a day ... two days, I find that I can walk.  I walk and walk.  It is now one hundred and fifty miles from my home ... it is that I stay here until....”

I grasped the girl’s left hand and turned away.  I was sick.  What if she had been my sister?

And then I thought of the laws read aloud to us that morning.  We soldiers, fighting under the flag of the British Empire, were we to violate one little rule ... were we to take any property, no matter how small, without just payment to its owner; were we to drink one glass of beer too much ... were we to overstep by a hair’s breadth the smallest rule of the code of a “soldier and a gentleman,” we were liable to be shot.

What of the German who had ruined this young girl and maimed her body?  Believe me, I realized then, if never before, what we were fighting for.  I was ready to give every drop of blood in my veins to avenge the great crimes that this little girl, in her frail person, typified.

We passed another night in the same billets.  Next morning at five-thirty we were roused to make a forced march, across country, of some twenty-two miles.  This was the hardest march of the entire time I was at the front.  Those ammunition boots!  Those gol-darned, double distilled, dash, dash, dash, dashed boots!

It was winter.  There was heavy traffic over the roads.  There were no road builders, and precious little organization for the traffic.  Part of the way the surface had been cobblestones; now it was broken flints.

We started out gallantly enough with full packs, very full packs.  Then, a few miles out, one would see out of the corner of his eye, a shirt sail quietly across the hedge-row; an extra pair of boots in the other direction; another shirt, a bundle of writing paper; more shirts, more boots.  Packs were lightening.  Down to fifty pounds now; forty, thirty, twenty, ten ... the road was getting worse.

No one would give up.  Half a dozen men stooped and slashed at their boots to get room for a pet corn or a burning bunion.  But every man pegged ahead.  This was the first forced march.  We were on our way to the trenches.  No man dare run the risk of being dubbed a piker.  We agonized, but persevered.

Armentieres was our objective.  A fine city, this, and one which we might have enjoyed under happier circumstances.  It was under fire, but not badly damaged, and consequently many thousands of the Imperial soldiers were “resting” there while back from the trenches.

We were the First Canadians.  We were expected, and the English Tommies determined to give us right royal welcome and a hearty handshake.  We had a reputation to keep up, for in England the Cockney Tommy and his brother “civvies” had named us the “Singing Can-ydians.”

But on the road to Armentieres ... oh, ma foi!  There was no singing.  Call us rather the “Swearing Can-ydians,” as we stumbled, bent double, lifting swollen feet, like Agag, treading on eggs through the streets of the city.