“I’ve been gassed three times, twice with the old gas and once with the new, and I’ve had my share.  Would I like to go home now?  Say, I’d rather be a lamp-post at the foot of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago than the whole electric light system in all the rest of the universe!”

We turned from this young American to Sapper W——­ of Western Canada, who had just been through the same battle underground, and asked him to tell us his own story.

“Well, sir, long before the battle we were digging under Hill Number 60.  A chance shell exploded on the surface above us and buried us all underground.  Three of us were killed and the other two left alive.  I had one man across my chest and another across my legs, one dead and the other wounded.  We could not move hand or foot.  We were buried in there for seven hours and they finally dug us out unconscious.

“Then we started another sap to lay a mine.  My pal was listening, with an iron rod driven in the ground and two copper wires leading from it to a head piece, such as a wireless operator uses, so that we could hear the approach of the enemy’s sappers, who were countermining against us.  My pal asked me to come and listen.  But I had hardly got the headpiece on when I said, ‘O Lord, they’re on us!’ and before I could get the thing off my ears the end of our sap fell through and the Germans were at us.  There was only room to use revolvers and bayonets in that dark hole and the Germans seemed to get nervous and could not shoot straight in the panic.  We lost only one of our men, but we killed seven and took the rest of the twenty prisoners.  Then, before they found out what had happened, we crawled through to the German end of the tunnel and blew up their sap.

“You say was I a Christian?  Not me!  I was wild and going to the devil.  But one night I was wounded and lay in a deserted shell hole, shot through the thigh, and unable to move for fifteen hours.  I was feeling for a cigarette in my pocket to ease the pain a bit, but all I could find was a little pocket testament which someone had given me, but which I had never read.  I managed to get it out and, thinking it might be my last hour, and that I might never be found, I started to read to try and forget my wound.  I read the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew, and sir, that little book changed my life.  I have read a chapter every day since then.  I was picked up by the infantry and carried to a hospital.  One night when I could not sleep for the pain, the nurse asked me if she could do anything for me, and I asked her to read the Bible to me.  She said she had never read it in her life, and I said it was about time she began, if that was so.  After she read it, she said it helped her too.  Yes, I say my prayers on my knees in the tent now.  Another boy has joined me this week; and the language in the tent is getting better.  I’m off to the front tomorrow to take my turn again.  But I’m no longer alone up there in the trenches.  It’s different now.”