“And, when the last Great Bugle Call _O’er Vimy sounding, throbs_, When the last grim joke is entered In the big black book of Jobs, _And Belgic battlefields give up_ Their victims to the air, I shouldn’t like to be the man _That played those men unfair_.” CHAPTER XI. _THE 25th BATTALION._ BY CAPT. G. C. M‘ELHENNY. In endeavoring to write this brief account of the organization, training and operations of the first Battalion of Nova Scotians to be raised and equipped in their own Province and also the first from these “the sea-girt hills and vales,” which have contributed more than their quota of soldiers, sailors, statesmen, educators and men of affairs in the past, to man the trenches in France and Flanders, the writer regrets and wishes it understood that he is not writing from personal observations, inasmuch as (and this is what he regrets) he was not a member of the 25th Battalion until the spring of 1917. The substance, then, of the following is compiled from the War Diary of the 25th Canadian Infantry Battalion, and is submitted to the publishers of this volume at their request and with the fullest appreciation of the writer’s inability to do justice to the task of chronicling four and a half years of any Battalion’s history, least of all the splendid story of the indomitable courage and tenacious striving toward an ideal which were the predominant features of this, in several respects, an unique Battalion in the Canadian Corps. There are many omissions in the following narrative which the writer regrets are imperative in order to make it of sufficient brevity to allow of its publication in this volume. The nominal roll of officers is as issued by the Department of Militia and Defence on the Battalion’s sailing from Halifax on May 20, 1915. The summary of decorations awarded was provided by the Adjutant-General, Canadian Militia, Ottawa, and does not include the medals won by General Hilliam, C.B., and several other officers and some other ranks when with Units other than the 25th Battalion. It will be interesting to note in the list of original 2nd Division officers who marched across the Rhine at Bonn on December 13, 1918, that only two were commissioned officers on September 15, 1915. They are Major A. W. P. Weston and Lieut. G. M. McNeil, M.C. There were ninety-six other ranks with the Battalion on both the above-mentioned dates.