There were reasons, of course, for the difference between conditions in Belgium and on the Somme. On the Somme, we were constantly preparing for a new advance, and we were only temporarily established on ground which we had but recently taken, after long drumming with big guns. The trenches were merely shell-holes connected by ditches. Our old and ubiquitous and useful friend, the sand bag, was not present in any capacity, and, therefore, we had no parapets or dug-outs. The communication trenches were all blown in and everything had to come to us overland, with the result that we never were quite sure when we should get ammunition, rations, or relief forces. The most awful thing was that the soil all about us was filled with freshly-buried men. If we undertook to cut a trench or enlarge a funk hole, our spades struck into human flesh, and the explosion of a big shell along our line sent decomposed and dismembered and sickening mementoes of an earlier fight showering amongst us. We lived in the muck and stench of “glorious” war; those of us who lived. Here and there, along this line, were the abandoned dug-outs of the Germans, and we made what use of them we could, but that was little. I had orders one day to locate a dug-out and prepare it for use as battalion headquarters. When I led a squad in to clean it up the odor was so overpowering that we had to wear our gas masks. On entering, with our flashlights, we first saw two dead nurses, one standing with her arm ’round a post, just as she had stood when gas or concussion killed her. Seated at a table in the middle of the place was the body of an old general of the German medical corps, his head fallen between his hands. The task of cleaning up was too dreadful for us. We just tossed in four or five fumite bombs and beat it out of there. A few hours later we went into the seared and empty cavern, made the roof safe with new timbers, and notified battalion headquarters that the place could be occupied. During this time I witnessed a scene which--with some others--I shall never forget. An old chaplain of the Canadian forces came to our trench section seeking the grave of his son, which had been marked for him on a rude map by an officer who had seen the young man’s burial. We managed to find the spot, and, at the old chaplain’s request, we exhumed the body. Some of us suggested to him that he give us the identification marks and retire out of range of the shells which were bursting all around us. We argued that it was unwise for him to remain unnecessarily in danger, but what we really intended was that he should be saved the horror of seeing the pitiful thing which our spades were about to uncover. “I shall remain,” was all he said. “He was my boy.”