We arrived just in time to save Pozieres.  The Australian boys had driven their way clean through to this place, but had not sufficient reenforcements to hold it, and were being exterminated when we reached the point and saved them with our guns and the wonderful work of our infantry in driving the Boches half-a-mile over the ridge.  The opportunity for Canada to assist her sister dominion was a matter of profound thankfulness to every man of us; to lend a helping hand under such circumstances was indeed cheery work.

The Imperial troops and Australians, under great difficulties, had blasted their way into Labazell, the crater of the mine blown up being one of the largest I have seen on the Western front.  This was the commencement of the Somme offensive and happened on the 1st of July, 1916.  When I reached this crater two battalions of Canadian troops were stationed in its depths in holes burrowed all around the sides, and it was used as an assembling point for reenforcements.  This will convey an idea of the extent of the mining operations.

The distance from the mine to our new position was three-quarters of a mile and the ground was billeted with corpses all the way to our battery; in the crater itself it was impossible to step without walking on bits of human bodies, and the dugouts surrounding were filled with German dead; there were thousands of them.  It was so manifestly impossible to give them any sort of a burial that the order was issued to fill in the dugouts where they lay and this was done by heaving the ground in on top of them.  Never to my dying day can I forget the sight of those German dead!  Dead everywhere!  In whatever direction the eye turned there were the rigid warriors of the Kaiser cold in death.  It was many nights before I could get a straight sleep without seeing mortifying Huns.  But I have long since ceased to have any pity for them.  Although they are the victims of a system over which they have no apparent control, yet they are supposed to be human beings with human, red blood in their veins, and the numberless deeds of which they have been guilty have branded them as nothing better than brute beasts in the eyes of all humanity.

With the help of the Pozieres Ridge we could observe Fritz quite clearly now, and every time he attempted any digging-in work our guns would speak to him in terms so convincing that he fain would desist.  My battery then moved up to within a thousand yards of the foe, one and a half miles northwest of Labazell, where we had to dig right in the open.  At this point the dead were also strewn so thickly that it was practically impossible to walk without stepping on a corpse, or part of one, every other step, among them being many of our own fellows who here paid the supreme price, and each time we came across a laddie in khaki it was a signal for an outburst of swearing.  Had we not sworn we would have wept, and, naturally, as men we preferred to do the other thing.