The whole time we were on this front everything went very smoothly, for we had one great man at the head of our Battalion. We were great friends with the French-Canadian Battalion, but there was another Battalion in our Brigade with whom we did not pull at all, and there was always a certain amount of jealousy between us, which was a good thing as we were always trying to outdo the other. Their Commanding Officer thought that they were the best battalion that ever left Canada, and Hilliam, the bulldog that he was, would not stand for that; so there was always a certain amount of rivalry between us. On one occasion there were a few Canadians guarding a road where people were not supposed to travel by night unless they had a pass, and a "Twenty-fifth" man who had been having a good time was coming home. "Halt," cried the sentry, "who goes there?" Answer "25th," "Pass 25th all is well," so the 25th man went on his way home. Along came another belated traveller. The same performance was gone thru and he gave the number of his battalion which was not the 25th. The answer came back from the sentry, "Turn out the guard," and they put this poor soldier into the guard room. It was all due to their petty notions as to what they should not do. But still it always works out well; a little jealousy between the battalions always makes one try to outdo the other. But thanks to our Commanding Officer we never took second place to any battalion in France. Shortly after we were ordered to move up to the M. and N. trenches where we relieved some of the 4th Brigade for a time. There was a trench in this locality named the "International" because of it's changing hands so often. Well, about a month before this the Germans had made an attack on the Scotties and they were just relieving and were not prepared for the Huns. But they fought until they saw that they would have to plan a surprise attack to get it back. The Scottish Division then went out for a rest and left Fritz master of the trench. But the canny Scot was not giving in so easily. When they had been reorganized they came back with one intention and that was to take back the "International" trench and they did. Well here we were in the Vierstrutt trench, and we held it for a week. Our artillery would open up every couple of hours and we could look over our parapets and watch them pounding Cain out of Fritz's trench--it was wonderful. We kept this up for about four or five days so that Fritz could not have much of a trench left. The idea of the heavy bombardment was to give him the notion that we were going to make an attack at this point. On the morning that the Scotties were to take back the trench Bill Cameron, George Roberts, together with Canning, and some of the other boys, played quite a trick on Fritz. They got a couple of very long steam pipes and filled them up with explosives; carried them across and put them underneath Fritz's barb wire. There was a long fuse attached.