"When I arrived at headquarters General Stoessel did not require my services, as Russians only were preferred, but I pleaded so hard with him through an interpreter, and told him I had come all the way from Canada, and was just spoiling for a fight, telling him at the same time if he desired to know more about me to send a cable message to their consul at Ottawa. This seemed to satisfy the general, and he at last assigned me to the Prebensky Regiment of sharpshooters that held 203, after testing me with a rifle. I soon got well acquainted with my comrades, and a jollier lot of fellows never lived, who had no end of fun at the expense of the little niggers, as they termed the Japanese. Our fun, however, was shortlived, for one day the hills opposite our position burst into flame as though struck by lightning, and 203 Metre spurted flame, and boiled like a cauldron from a succession of fearful explosions, as shells alighted upon it. Our colonel signalled us to lie close. Every little while a gun would be tossed clean into the air by the explosion of an eleven-inch shell, and sometimes a whole squad of men would be literally torn to pieces, legs, arms and fragments of flesh flying in all directions. This pounding made us dreadful angry, a number of the men swearing fluently, even the grey-haired colonel, I was told, made some unmentionable remarks, and I, who had never sworn in my life, made some very sarcastic references to the proceeding. "Those horrible eleven-inch shells made bomb-proofs and covered works of all kinds very little more secure than the open. Many men were struck down around me, some of them horribly mangled, and portions of the works literally smashed to splinters, but such is war, and some call it glory. "After this fearful hammering had gone on for a time with hell reigning all around, as suddenly as it started the appalling din ceased, and nothing could be heard but the piteous moaning of men who were so horribly mangled, many of them, that if their own mothers were present, they could not recognize them. During the awful bombardment, just as we had expected, the enemy, who had made considerable progress under cover of the night, had advanced right to the foot of the hill. Hitherto we could see nothing, as not a soldier was in sight, and all that we could do was to pound the naked hillside, but now the little brown squads, in twenties, began rushing across the fire zone, and it appeared as if they were reserves coming up to reinforce the men at the base of the hill.