About the only amusement we had during our long stay in the front trenches in Belgium, was to sit with our backs against the rear wall and shoot at the rats running along the parapet. Poor Macfarlane, with a flash of the old humor which he had before the war, told a “rookie” that the trench rats were so big that he saw one of them trying on his great-coat. They used to run over our faces when we were sleeping in our dug-outs, and I’ve seen them in ravenous swarms, burrowing into the shallow graves of the dead. Many soldiers’ legs are scarred to the knees with bites. The one thing of which we constantly lived in fear was a gas attack. I used to awaken in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, dreaming that I heard the clatter and whistle-blowing all along the line which meant that the gas was coming. And, finally, I really did hear the terrifying sound, just at a moment when it couldn’t have sounded worse. I was in charge of the nightly ration detail, sent back about ten miles to the point of nearest approach of the transport lorries, to carry in rations, ammunition and sand bags to the front trenches. We had a lot of trouble, returning with our loads. Passing a point which was called “Shrapnel Corner” because the Germans had precise range on it, we were caught in machine-gun fire and had to lie on our stomachs for twenty minutes, during which we lost one man, wounded. I sent him back and went on with my party only to run into another machine-gun shower a half-mile further on. While we were lying down to escape this, a concealed British battery of five-inch guns, about which we knew nothing, opened up right over our heads. It shook us up and scared us so that some of our party were now worse off than the man who had been hit and carried to the rear. We finally got together and went on. When we were about a mile behind the reserve trench, stumbling in the dark through the last and most dangerous path overland, we heard a lone siren whistle followed by a wave of metallic hammering and wild tooting which seemed to spread over all of Belgium a mile ahead of us. All any of us could say was: “Gas!” All you could see in the dark was a collection of white and frightened faces. Every trembling finger seemed awkward as a thumb as we got out our gas masks and helmets and put them on, following directions as nearly as we could. I ordered the men to sit still and sent two forward to notify me from headquarters when the gas alarm was over. They lost their way and were not found for two days. We sat there for an hour, and then I ventured to take my mask off. As nothing happened, I ordered the men to do the same. When we got into the trenches with our packs, we found that the gas alarm had been one of Fritz’s jokes. The first sirens had been sounded in the German lines, and there hadn’t been any gas.