It’s just back at the guns from a two days’ rest at the wagon-fines. It’s the first time I’ve been back since March. I rose early on a blazing morning and started down to the point where I was to meet my horses. I say “rose early,” but as a matter of fact I had only had four hours’ sleep in forty-eight, and hadn’t had my clothes off for nearly three weeks. As I drew away, the low thunder that we make grew less and less, the indescribable smell of bursting explosives fainter; soon I realized that a lark was singing overhead; then another—then another. Brave little birds to come so near to danger to sing for us. At the edge of a wood I found my chestnut mare, Kitty, and my groom—the chap who used to work at the Silver King mine, which overlooks our ranch at Kootenay. That we should share that memory always forms a bond of kindness between us. We didn’t stop long at the wagon-line, but soon started out to get farther back for lunch. I had it in the shack of an officer who was with me at Petewawa. Then off I went at a gallop for green trees and clean country. I hadn’t gone far before I came to a God’s Acre full of crowded little white crosses and newly turned earth. Our captain was with me, and he learnt that an old friend from one of our batteries was on the way down with a Union Jack spread over him. We went into the brown field where the men who have “gone west” lie so closely and snugly side by side, and came to a place where six shallow holes were dug like clay coffins. Presently, winding through the forest of crosses, the hard blue sky overhead, we saw the little band advancing, the stretcher carried high on the shoulders of four officers. The burden was set down and the flag lifted, showing the mummy-like form sewn up in the blanket in which the living man had slept. The chaplain began tremulously, “I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believeth in Me,” etc., and while he recited I watched the faces of the gunners drawn up at attention in the strong sunlight. To them, whatever else the ceremony meant, it at least meant this—a day away from the guns. Suddenly I discovered that the Lord’s Prayer was being said. Then heads were again covered and the word of command was given. “Right turn. Quick march.” The stretcher was gathered up and the little crowd dispersed. I suppose there is a woman somewhere who would have given ten’ years of life to have stood in my shoes beside that narrow grave. For myself I thought, “Well, the chap’s got what we long for most out here—rest. He won’t have to stand in the mud any more, when his feet are like stones and eyes like lead, watching and watching the rockets go up along the front. And he won’t have to guide his guns in at night, or wonder what life will do to him when the war is ended. He longed for sleep and now he sleeps endlessly.” It didn’t impress me as at all sad. He’d played his part like a man and was at last rewarded. But we—we were alive, and we hadn’t had a bath