The officer hastened to assure her that our skin was as white as hers and the native courtesy of the old French lady was trebled to make amends for her mistake. This same officer was keenly desirous of showing his knowledge of French, which was at its best quite limited, and he would converse always in that language with the French soldiers or people with whom he came in contact. He inquired at an _estaminet_ in his best French for some red pepper, and the good housewife, who happened to speak only patois handed him a nicely folded little paper package of cootie, or lice killer. Of course he had to endure a laugh. But his enthusiasm for displaying French was most marked when I heard him at the close of a short talk with a French soldier, who happened to be equally desirous of displaying his knowledge of English. When they were parting, our quartermaster shook his hand and said, "Oh, reservoir." "Tanks," replied Frenchy. CHAPTER XXVIII LEAVING YSER Before we left the canal we had a really miraculous escape--I and the other members of my platoon. We were detailed on ration party and while waiting for our loads we straggled up the road, the boys being only a few yards apart from one another. Suddenly we heard the ever-increasing roar of a huge howitzer shell coming straight at us. Throwing ourselves flat we waited for what seemed an hour, although in reality only a second, and with a shrieking roar, like the crack of doom, it landed in our midst. I remember going up, but I never remembered coming down. When I came to my senses some sixteen hours later I was told what happened after the arrival of the German souvenir. Not one of our boys had been killed, nor even wounded, although several were sent home suffering from shell-shock, and very bad cases too. We had all been stunned and consequently put out of action for that night. A second ration party took our place and the same thing was repeated, but this time with terrible results; forty-eight of our boys became casualties--killed, wounded or shocked. The wonder is that any of us stayed on duty at all, and in my particular case the result was to make me a mass of irritated nerves, while my hands and limbs twitched for days. I believe if the M.O. had seen me I would have been sent for at least a week's rest, but I stayed it out. It was midnight and as hot as Hades when we started from the banks of the Yser. Now we had been some twenty-two days constantly in action. I have not spoken of the numberless times we stood to, to be launched into the line to help our terribly hard-pressed French and British comrades. Every time a tornado of German artillery fire would open up, we would stand ready to advance across open ground to the front line. Also, in spite of our fun on the Yser's banks, we were often subjected to terrific bombardments from the Boche heavies. In short, our casualties on the Yser were fearfully many.