It was now that there took place in the intervening ground between the enemy’s barrage and our own a thousand struggles between brave men palpitating with health and life and hundreds of merciless hidden machines belching forth fragments of insensate metal. For this is the essence and image of modern warfare. It was flesh and blood grappling with lead and iron. On our own side the sound of our artillery was indistinguishable; but a great volume of British shells did pierce that infernal barrage and crash eastward into the German line. Once, it is related, two shells from opposing sides collided in mid-air with a shriek like a woman in agony. Our gunners worked madly, and it is certain they wrought havoc amongst the enemy. But they were severely handicapped. It was an unequal contest. The Germans seemed to know the position of every Canadian battery, and all of these got their share of the enemy’s attention. In the intervening territory many gallant men were ministering to the wounded who, torn, splintered, and bleeding, lay strewn upon the ground. Stretcher-bearers were moving backwards and forwards as though their nerves were of steel. Officers were huddling their men together in places of uncertain sanctuary. Colonel Shaw, of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, directed eighty of his men to Cumberland dug-outs--a little shallow square. When it became too hot there, he forced them all out through a gap and bade them run for their lives. He himself refused to leave his wounded men, and remained there valiantly at his post until a shell struck him and he was killed. Seventy yards from this spot was the dressing-station of the battalion. Here the medical officer in charge toiled unceasingly all through that terrible morning, the wounded coming to him, some crawling on hands and knees, by scores. Before the war Captain Haight was a jovial ship’s surgeon on a steamer plying between Vancouver and Honolulu. He was a man of infinite courage--"nothing ever rattled him or upset his temper," said one survivor to me. When the dressing-station was shelled, he moved with his assistant, Lieutenant Atkinson, calmly and coolly to another on more exposed ground, and continued his humane work to the last, when he was dispatched by a bayonet in the most revolting manner. Another officer, Captain Harper, who hailed from Kamsack, in distant Saskatchewan, was ministering to an officer and three desperately wounded men. He refused to leave them when the lull came and the Germans were seen advancing, although they urged him to do so. "I said I’d stand by you boys," he said, "and I will." A few minutes later and he, too, was gone. Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrage, two battalions of desperate men were watching for a chance to cleave their way through to their comrades in peril. But there was little hope that any in the front line of trenches survived.