"Then we had to take ours. They had the range of us to a nicety, and they gave us particular hell with shell-fire for days before and during the assault. When we went up and took over the line from the assaulting troops, we had to take another dose of iron which the Huns put on while they were getting their counter-attack ready. But the counter-attack never came off--at least, not what we’d call an attack. Our artillery got them in the belt and cut them up too bad to want to come to close steel with us. So we settled down in a day or two as if there hadn’t been even a brush, and Fritz was glad to let it go at that. "During nearly all the last turn-in the rain poured down in torrents off and on, and you can imagine the state the lads were in, with freshly dug trenches and everything being blown to smithereens by shell-fire. Towards the last our trenches consisted of shell holes connected by ditches and carpeted with water and some Flanders mud. If a shell burst within a hundred yards, we had to get someone to scrape the plaster from our eyes before we knew if we were hurt. You couldn’t tell a captain from a Tommy, and it didn’t matter much just then, since all we could do was to lie low and hang tight. "But we did it, we did it. We got even with them for trying to wipe out our old battalion. Why, the Huns were lying so thick when we drove through that we had to jump over them all the way, but we got ’home’ at last, and ’home’ we mean to stay." Thus was trench after trench retaken, the Canadians sending up a mighty cheer when they discovered that a great quantity of stores which they had left there ten days before, half buried by the force of minenwerfer shells, had been undiscovered or at least unremoved by the enemy, and were practically intact. Three German officers and 130 men were made prisoners. Another enemy officer was subsequently discovered wounded in the intervening territory and brought in. The utmost frankness was expressed by these prisoners as to the result of the engagement, one going so far as to say:-- "We knew that it was a point of pride with you, and that you would never stop until you had got back your trenches. I knew it--but I had to obey orders--and--here I am!"