Fingerless hands are unprofitable in the trenches, and not very useful elsewhere in the activities of war. Getting rid of one’s fingers is a comparatively cheap exchange for release from the dangers and maddening anguish of long periods in the trenches. Houle did not think these men were cowards. “But only men who have lived in the trenches can understand.” Though he makes no claim to heroism for himself, Houle’s record shows that he was a resolute soldier doing valiant things that he sets down in his story quite as matters of routine experience—such as going out under fire to bring in the wounded. He names Ypres the “graveyard of the old Sixty-first.” They were carried to within six miles of the place in London buses, twenty-five men to a bus. The remaining distance they tramped. At Ypres they first met “the gallant French troops,” and his company of French-Canadians being at the left of the English line acted as interpreters. Here the trenches were but forty yards from the Germans and in bad condition; they were raked terribly by German machine guns on a height. There were dead bodies of Germans and French lying between that had been there three months, neither side having the chance to bury its dead. These were to be seen through the periscopes—but one did not need to see to know they were there. The Battle of Ypres was one of the greatest of the war, one of the most desperate, one of the most deadly in human toll, but out of it all comes the memory of the gas attacks to which the men were then so helplessly exposed. “There comes a sudden stinging in your nose. Your eyes water. You breathe fire. You suffocate. You burn alive. There are razors and needles in your throat. It is as if you drank boiling hot tea. Your lungs flame. You want to tear your body. You become half wild. Your head aches beyond description. You vomit, you drop exhausted, you die. It is a frightful thing to see your friends like that. Every other man seemed to fall. As I fought I marveled that I was spared. Again and again came to me the belief that my life was charmed. An ecstatic confidence bore me up. I was brave because I was so sure of life, while all my companions seemed groveling in death.” [Illustration: _Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._ Captain Richard T. Smith _42nd Division, 117th Field Battalion, Signal Corps_ Before daylight on the morning of March 17, 1918, while constructing communication lines in the vicinity of Fort de Manonviller, France, Captain Smith conducted his men to a place of safety, and while the fire was still intense returned and carried a wounded soldier to the dugout, where he fell exhausted.]