As we moved forward we met men falling back gasping, coughing and sobbing, and the stink of their clothing was of hell's own reek, a choky mixture of chlorine and sulphur. "It's not war, mate; it's bloody murder!" was all one man gasped as he threw himself coughing on the ground, where he died before we moved on. It was not a pretty sight, and more than one rifle-butt was grasped the tighter and more than one oath sworn to get at the fiends who had let loose this vile poison, against which the only protection we had was a little pad of gauze to fasten over the mouth and nose after soaking in water from our water-bottles. These had been supplied by the thousand as soon as the authorities made known their wants by the women and children of England, and, feeble though this protection was, these simple little pads saved many lives that week. But it was not our fate to meet the enemy again while in the salient. After continuing our march about another quarter-mile we lined a roadside and commenced digging another trench. Here we lay and shivered all night, the men crouching in the trench, every fourth man alert and watching, the officers lying on the ground behind in shell holes or walking up and down swinging their arms and trying to keep warm. It was only one night of many. The Germans continued to discharge gas against our line until May 15th, when they retook Hill 60. The bitter struggle of the past three weeks had begun as a mere counter-attack to our capture of this small but important mound. By this time, however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to weigh heavy in the scales. Our brigade was the first to be relieved, marching out on the night of May 3rd, wondering vaguely where we were going, and also, perhaps, what would become of our friends "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," with their stolid faces, their ample bosoms, and their square hips. CHAPTER XII BAILLEUL Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the Mecca of the British Army. But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good billets they were, too--a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the officers.