After the battle of Armistice Day, the bearded priest of Toulgas Church was found amid the hideous battle litter of his wrecked home, the crown of his head cut clean as with a scalpel, exposing the naked brains. Near him were two children, a boy and a girl, sleeping by the guardian who from infancy had taught them of a Providence who watched over the good of earth, and surely would not desert them through this malignant turmoil that had descended to the quiet moujik country with terrible death and indescribable misery like the recurrent plagues. So sleeping, a shell had found the unconscious children, and lulled them to that everlasting sleep. The big shells had a way thus, of stealthily sniping their victim's life away with no mark of their dread approach, as if disdaining the brutality of violence. But again they would pounce down with the atrocity of a fiend, smash head from trunk, and members from the torso, and leave great gaping wounds gushing black blood with unspeakable, horrible ghastliness. Back of the church, on the same side of the road, is a moujik house with the customary stable attached in rear. A platoon used this as billeting quarters. It was shielded by the church forward, and gave shelter to the little reserve that would replenish the blockhouse at the bridge with men and ammunition, and, if the blockhouse was knocked out, would stand off the Bolsheviks from crossing the bridge. From the billet house to the church is about thirty yards. The priest's house is nearly opposite the church across the road. The blockhouse was built just before the Armistice fight and stands on the bank of the stream guarding the bridge about twenty yards forward of the priest's house. It is thirty yards over the bridge, and in front of the first line of Upper Toulgas houses, a field, shorn of all cover, stretches one hundred yards to the stream. Back of the center village on the hilltop the ground undulates almost unnoticeably in a series of folds and reaches a shallow draw. A little beyond this, perhaps two hundred fifty yards, is still another clump of huts known as Lower Toulgas. In this draw, the Canadians built emplacements for their two Field Pieces, which during the first battles were the only artillery for the defense of Toulgas. The forest gives way for nearly a half a mile before Upper Toulgas. From Upper Toulgas to Lower Toulgas is an ample two miles. From Toulgas, itself, the center village, to Lower Toulgas is a scant three-quarters of a mile.