Some description of the battlefield, which the Battalion entered early in October, is necessary. For nearly three years the enemy had been fortifying the area east of Ypres, making use of every method and device known to modern warfare--and throughout the war the Germans were unsurpassed as field engineers. The result was a mighty fortress, covering many square miles of ground, second to none on the Western Front, or, for that matter, in the world. The ground was covered with trenches, constructed according to the latest ideas of fortification, and crammed with every device for offence and defence. Thousands of miles of barbed wire had been used in the construction of obstacles. Hundreds of “pill-boxes”--massive but low-lying structures of reinforced concrete, invulnerable unless they received direct hits from at least an 8-inch shell--covered the country-side and sheltered thousands of machine guns. The German artillery was extremely powerful and magnificently handled; and as every ridge, up to the battle of Messines, was in enemy hands, his gunners had all the advantages of superior observation. Such was the country that the British had been attacking, and slowly penetrating, during the last two months. This country the British and German artillery had turned into a desolation unparalleled even on the Somme battlefield in the previous year. Literally, every inch of ground had been torn up by shell fire. The whole appearance of the country-side had changed--most of the roads had almost disappeared, thick woods had become nothing but collections of broken and distorted tree-stumps, of some villages there was scarcely a trace. Everywhere the ground was littered with the awful debris of war--dead bodies of men and animals, derelict tanks and guns, shattered wagons and every conceivable form of what was known to the men as “salvage.” To crown all, the heavy rains of the late summer and early autumn had converted the whole area into a quagmire, the drainage system having been completely destroyed by artillery fire. Cross-country travelling was extremely difficult for a man on foot, for even when he picked his way carefully he was often bogged well above the knees; transport and animals could not move at all except by the newly-made roads and tracks. Every effort had been made to deal with the situation by the construction of plank roads, gridded tracks and light railways, but transport difficulties and the activity of the enemy artillery seriously interfered. Could the prophetic eye of Dante have looked so far forward into the future, he might readily have introduced this desolation as the setting to one of the lowest circles of Hell. * * * * *