The Battle of Ypres was a twenty-one day affair, and the toll exacted was appalling. Of the 500 boys of Houle’s company who left Canada only 20 survived. Then came other engagements until in May, 1915, he was again in Richebourg, and the next day an assault was made on the German first line trenches. The first two lines of trenches were taken without difficulty, but there was a counter attack at the third and out of Houle’s company (now reinforced to 365 men) 75 were killed, 100 wounded and 20 taken prisoners. “We were obliged to leave our wounded in the trench with the dead. I lay until night in the German second line trench among the dead and wounded,” for of course there were no communications and no means of getting medical help for the men “writhing in agony all around us.” At night Highlanders from the 13th and 14th Battalions came to the relief. Three days later there was an attack at a point near Lacouture, where the Germans were entrenched in a hilly vantage. The French Canadians had been reinforced again, this time to 420. The Scots Grays and the Cold Stream Guards engaged in the assault. The artillery cleared the way for the charge. “On the third tussle we got into the German trenches. It was a close fight. We used even our fists. My bayonet was broken, and I used my gun as a club. There we remained until we got reinforcements. Out of 420 men my company was reduced to eighty. No, I could not be killed.” Then the French Canadians fought at Cuinchy and at La Basse—repetitions of the same story. He had fought in the front lines from almost the very opening of the war, “until all the bed I knew was wet earth, and all the rest I knew was snatches of sleep obtained during lulls in the roaring tumult. And long since I had had my fill of the fighting.” Then Jan. 10, 1916, he was summoned to headquarters to receive his discharge. He frankly rejoiced in the fact that he was free, free from the trenches, their fevers, their wounded and dead, their noxious odors, their deadly gases, their man-eating rats; free to go home to relatives and friends neither maimed nor wounded. Not that he had gone unscathed. There was a dent in his skull made by a spent bullet, and a very bad bruise on the leg made by a piece of shell, but these were trifles. NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT “I take no credit for any special courage in the field. If I was brave it was because I had to be so. We were all brave who kept our senses. We became accustomed to a large degree to the incessant intimacy with dangers and death. We could look at frightful things without wincing.”