There is no kind of suffering endured in the battle front that has such a horror for the men as the gas; it is that fighting for breath that takes the life out of a fellow, and, God! how it chokes.  Out of that bunch of 56 gassed men, only six came out whole.

The following week we were ordered to leave the Somme.  Although I felt in the mood for sticking it as long as I had the strength to keep going, yet I must confess the order filled my soul with a gratitude that was unspeakable.  I had been in the Somme campaign three months, and when our guns swept into position at Martinsaart, my weight was 171; when I left, I tipped the scales at 145.  The men who had been with the guns there and who know what it is to work 24 hours in the day for many days in the week, rarely during the three months experiencing the refreshing rest of a consecutive two hours’ sleep, and working like veritable demons during every waking moment, either at the guns or cleaning the ammunition, or carrying the ammunition into place,—­they will understand what it means to lose 25 pounds in weight on the Somme.

My uniform was in rags and saturated so thickly with grease and dirt that for many days it was one of my pet recreations to take a knife and scoop it by the bladeful out of the khaki cloth.  And my skin!  What a hide!  The combination of cleaning and repairing guns, working them constantly, driving horses, observation work, together with the gas, my body was saturated with a mixture that took weeks to extract.

The cut-up-ground, pock-marked with shell holes as closely as the cells in a honeycomb, was of course carefully noted by Fritzie’s aerial observers, and they were naturally led to believe that it would be physically impossible for our batteries to be relieved,—­that is, to retire and another battery take our place.  But we camouflaged.  Under cover of a fog we worked like beavers for a day and a night, filling in shell holes, and made fairly decent roads under the conditions, and one fine morning, still under the friendly shelter of the fog, leaving our ammunition behind, we pulled out the gun; the entire Canadian Division retired and were relieved by the English Tommies.

As we were going out we passed their batteries coming in and it was heartening indeed to hear the compliments and praises that were showered upon us by the lads of England, although we had not done a single thing that they could not have done and done just as well as we, and maybe better.

In some places where our guns were stationed the ground conditions made it absolutely impossible to remove them for the time; in such cases the Imperial batteries left their guns at the horse lines and took over the Canadian guns, the Canadian gunners taking their pets instead.  This occasioned a real and heartfelt loss to both Canadian gunners and Imperial boys who had to change over their pets, because every gunner learns to acquire a real affection for his mistress, as he terms the gun, and with many of the men it was like losing a good horse or a dog to whom they had become sincerely and warmly attached, the attachment being born of weeks and months of the most arduous trial and test.