“It all started near as I remember on Thursday, with a terrible artillery bombardment all along the lines. About 5 or 6 o’clock we saw a cloud of greenish smoke on our left, which we thought at the time was the trenches there being blown up. Later after dark the French troops (Algerians) started to come through the back of our trenches, and we learned then how the Germans had used poisonous gas which had driven them out. Up till some time around midnight the German artillery had been shelling back of us, presumably to keep back reinforcements, and we escaped very well, but now after we had repulsed a German attack, hell itself seemed to open around us. Time for two or three days after that is nearly blank. A horrible sleepless nightmare is what I would call it. As in a dream I can see and hear every little item that took place. Starting at midnight Thursday and keeping up for hours, a steady stream of shells were pouring at our trenches. How anyone lived through it I can’t imagine. Shrapnel, high explosives, acid and gas shells poured around us by the hundreds. Our parapets and dugouts were blown to pieces and while not looking out we were kept busy digging men out who had been buried.

The acid from these shells had got into all our eyes, and some of the boys were, at least for a the time, totally blinded. It was while sitting low with my back to the parapet wiping my smarting eyes that received my first ride. A shell hit the parapet and burst directly behind me and used me as a battering ram to go through our dugouts. Why I wasn’t squashed to a pulp I can’t realize, for our dugouts were very strongly built and with thousands of pounds behind me I was thrown completely through it. I was knocked unconscious and came to with a dreadful sensation that I was choking. The boys soon had me out and in a few moments, I felt as good as ever. Shortly after I was standing behind one of the few good parts of the parapet when I was given another toss.

I don’t know where the shell hit, but I woke up with a pain in my back, and to realize that the man who had been standing beside me but a minute ago was now lying beside me dead.

Men were lying scattered around the trench dead and wounded. The wounded were being speedily looked after by our stretcher bearers who by the way, deserve great praise: the dead were lying as they as they had fallen and the boys were keeping a good look out and getting all the cover possible. Tweedie pulled me up close to the parapet and I lay there for some time, afterwards going around to the next company, where Mr. Smith tucked me away comfortably in his dugout. I was taken out after dark and travelled back through St. Julien to a field dressing station. On all our journey the shells were screaming and bursting around us. The roads were thick with dead horses, broken wagons, etc. and here and there the body of a man was lying. Soon after reaching the dressing station the shells started to whistle overhead, but I was soon being whirled through a shell swept area by one of the motor ambulances.

The first distinct remembrance I have of within hours of the correct time is waking up Sunday morning in the hospital at Hazebrouke. I had been in four hospitals and had not a bite to eat since Thursday. I am now making a speedy recovery from a sprained back. That, leaving out thousands of incidentals which would take me a week to tell you, is what I actually saw of the battle.

Now they are no longer human beings to me – they aren’t even human brutes – and in the future my finger will not hesitate a moment. There are two words all Germans can say in English, and they will always use them when they cannot get away from British steel. One is ‘mercy’ and the other is ‘me comrade’ and many Canadian have heard them make that cry, but they themselves do not know the meaning of mercy. But what’s the: I could talk for a day on their treacherous methods, so I’m going to quit here.”