Everything was tolerably quiet, with the exception of an occasional shelling from either side, until New Year's Eve, when an infernal row got up and on New Year's Day we had about one hundred and thirty casualties. The shelling grew worse, and we discovered that the Saxons had been relieved by the Prussians. Twice they charged us in mass formation, and we were forced to retire to our second-line trenches. It was their idea and intention to break through our lines to get to Calais in time for the Kaiser's birthday. This was the beginning of their big drive. Although we got a severe cutting up, we managed to hold all the ground we had, despite their mass formation, which is a stern and dreadful thing to face. One morning, about the middle of January, the coal boxes, Jack Johnsons and Black Marias were just simply shaking the earth. The German airplanes had been very active these last few days, and it seemed they were giving their heavy artillery the proper range on our lines. The Jack Johnsons were landing to the right of our regiment and were gradually working their way up toward us. We could see them tearing up parts of the trenches--smashing up men, whose limbs were sent flying up through the air. The sight was really too frightful to recall. Orders were given that the Black Watch should stand to its post and that no man was to retire. But as the heavy shells drew nearer, smashing everything up, they proved too much for the recruits who had joined us only within the last few days, and they made for the reserve trenches. By this time the Germans were beginning to make their advance in waves. Word was passed along that our regiment should retire to its reserve trenches, but it came too late for a few of us,--as we were already pumping it into the Germans. Those who had retired were firing over our heads at the advancing Huns, thus making it dangerous for us to withdraw. Just as I had made up my mind that we must get back somehow, Sergeant Johnstone crept to my side and said; "Cassells, let's stick it out. This might last only a few minutes more and then it'll be all right again." "All right, Johnstone," I said; and we shook hands. Our own shells were bursting so close to our front that they were showering us with earth and stones. I saw the nearest Germans about a couple of hundred yards away. Then suddenly a dark curtain dropped before my eyes. CHAPTER FOURTEEN I seemed to awake from a long sleep, only to discover that instead of being in a trench or a billet I was in a hospital; one of the kind made of canvas. There were two great marquee tents, with nurses flitting about quietly--like angels they seemed to me, for the moment. The pain that racked my body was awful. I lay there trying to determine in what part of me the pain was located but it seemed to be all over me. I noticed that either a nurse or an orderly was constantly in attendance at my cot.