they smothered the German batteries in Sanctuary Woods.  Then a flock of German airplanes flew over these guns and smothered them partially for a few minutes with their machine guns.  This entire action had lasted an hour, and at this moment the little relief party, accompanied by our parson, arrived from the wagon lines.  Again we were out of ammunition, and the O.C. asked me if I would volunteer to go to the wagon lines after it.  “Yes, sir,”—­and I mounted the parson’s horse and started.

Although it had now started raining, I left the dugout with nothing on but pants, shirt and boots; I had no gas helmet, no coat, no cap, no puttees,—­there was no time to be lost—­and I was covered with grease and dirt, and must easily have looked like an African.

I had scarcely started when a shell lifted a tree out of its roots and threw it on the road right in front of me, but the horse cleared it with a jump.  I passed a dressing station and the sight was unspeakably sad; laid in rows as thickly as they could be placed, the wounded men in all stages of agony were patiently waiting their turn,—­ah, God! how patient those men were,—­and scattered here and there on both sides of the road were groups of men who had just begun their last sleep, and at sight of them the horse would shy and balk every few yards.  I had no spurs with which to control the animal, and my work was cut out for me! he was an ideal parson’s horse, for the brute would hardly go faster than a walk.  Getting through the gas barrage, I came to a camouflage hedge, used to screen and protect the traffic on the road, which sheltered me for four or five hundred yards further, and then I emerged again into the open, and again I was spotted.  At this point a set of new dressing stations had been established, and they were as busy as bees looking after wounded men, and every moment of the time they were engaged in their work the machine guns of the enemy planes were hammering the stretcher bearers and the wounded men as industriously as though they were attacking fighting men.  It was quite evident they knew I was a dispatch rider, and I was a target every step of the way, shells being planted before me, behind me and on each side of me.  But I knew the Major’s thought was with me every foot of the way; I knew he was counting the seconds until I would reach the wagon lines and deliver the message—­and the only message—­that would save the position; I knew he was praying for me that very moment and I knew that every man in the battery was doing the same thing.  If I failed!  It was not with me a question of my life; I didn’t care a damn for that, and every man of us, on that day anyway, felt the same.  But I must hasten with all the speed that was in me, and I must keep my life, and my head as well, that the others might live.