For, having taken their objective, the British troops found not only a second but a third line of trenches protected by entanglements of a most formidable nature, and so situated as to render the ground recently won at such heavy cost almost untenable. To carry these lines would require another bombardment more intense even than that which had preceded the attack. Our line had advanced one mile and there it stayed. So ended the first attempt on our part to renew the offensive after the stagnation of a winter of trench warfare. For years we had been taught that an army that relinquishes the offensive acknowledges itself as beaten. It now began to look as though military science had undergone a complete revolution and that trench warfare and the policy of attrition were to be the normal methods of the future. But Neuve Chapelle showed something else--it showed that the indomitable spirit of our men had not been quenched by the misery and suffering of the winter months and that the British bayonet was as much to be feared as ever. "We were kept pretty busy," wrote a friend, "doing rapid fire, and lost quite a few from shell fire. But our artillery had the time of their lives, and fired pretty steadily the whole three days of the show." Later he wrote that they were moving northward--probably to Hill 60--and we could expect there would be something doing shortly. It was not to Hill 60 that the Canadian Division went, but further northward in the Ypres salient to the left of the 27th Division, where the "Princess Pats" were winning immortality at St. Eloi. So the days wore on, the surplus officers chafing at the monotony of drill on a barrack square, relieved as it was by "Thes Dansants" at the Metropole and promenades along the Leas at Folkestone. Then one day a medical officer dropped a sure tip. He had been warned to prepare beds for a thousand casualties--the Canadians were in something big at last! Just how big it was we realised a week later when the newspapers broke forth into flamboyant headlines, "CANADIANS SAVED SITUATION," "FOUR GUNS RECAPTURED," and other startling sentences that danced before the eyes. Lyte and the writer were returning from some light festivities, when the hoarse cry "All about the Canadians" arrested their attention. Papers were hurriedly bought, and the brief vague lines of the official _communique_ eagerly scanned. "By Jove!" was Lyte's exclamation; "but isn't that great!" The writer, however, hardly heard him; he was thinking of the many good friends who had taken part and the price they had to pay, and his answer was the monosyllabic "Huh!" of the aborigine. That evening we packed our kits. CHAPTER VIII YPRES, 1915