I was dispatched to headquarters with a written message. Captain Hopkins gave me my instructions. "I have chosen you because you keep the pace up longer than the rest." This compliment deeply pleased me. "Go to headquarters as quickly as your legs will carry you, report immediately you get there and place yourself under the orders of Sergeant C----." The words were barely out of his mouth when I was out of the cellar, and down that gloomy road I scudded, a queer mixture of terror and elation--terror because of what might happen to me, and elation in the satisfaction of doing my duty. Hard as I traveled I was breathing with perfect ease when I arrived at headquarters and reported. I was told to lie down as it might be hours before I would again have a chance to rest. It was impossible to sleep as file after file of bombers and reinforcements piled into the different buildings. I found out that the Germans were expected to attack the French that night on the left of the salient, some hundred yards or so from our position. The signal, if the Huns attacked the French, was to be three red flares flying up in rapid succession. Our Intelligence Department was not asleep; the attack was expected at three o'clock and promptly on the minute it began. The French held easily and we were not needed. Next morning I was sent back to my platoon and nothing very exciting happened except the sharp shelling by Fritz of our position until about ten o'clock, when a thing new to our experience came over. The noise was appalling. It was the commencement of the awful bombardment of Ypres. CHAPTER XX HELL LET LOOSE That night we relieved the Tenth Battalion and took over the front line. Right from the beginning casualties piled up; the shell fire was terrific. In the lulls of the bombardment we dug frantically to consolidate our flimsy defenses. Barbed wire we had none; we simply threw out in front any obstructions we could find. One amusing incident occurred here; I laugh at it now, although I did not at the time. The little dark man, Libby, was the hero. Libby translated means "Coolness and indifference to danger." A volume could be written of the events in which this man figured that for sheer daring almost surpassed belief. Libby and I were working on a traverse, which, as every one knows, is a cross-section of trench, and we were exerting every effort to fill bags of dirt and pile them up on this cross-section. Buried underneath our trench were dead men planted as thickly as they could be laid. Digging down I turned up a boot containing a foot. "Stick it in," said Libby. "Do you think I'm going to touch that thing with my hand?" "What's the odds," said he, "but if you don't want to, shove it on the shovel with your foot."