The war held and crushed and sweated on the western front. Every day found the Canadians in the grinding and perilous toil of it. In April, 1916, the Second Canadian Division held the ground about St. Eloi against terrific onslaughts. Then and there were fought those desperate actions known as the Battles of the Craters. Hiram Sill, D. C. M., now a sergeant, received a wound that put him out of action for nearly two months. Dick Starkley was buried twice, once beneath the lip of one of the craters as it returned to earth after a jump into the air, and again in his dugout. No bones were broken, but he had to rest for three days. Other Canadian divisions moved into the Ypres salient in April--back to their first field of glory of the year before. That salient of terrible fame, advanced round the battered city of Ypres like a blunt spearhead driven into the enemy's positions, will live for centuries after its trenches are leveled. British soldiers have fallen in their tens of thousands in and beyond and on the flanks of that city of destruction. From three sides the German guns flailed it through four desperate years. Masses of German infantry surged up and broke against its torn edges, German gas drenched it, liquid fire scorched it, and mines blasted it. Now and again the edge of that salient was bent inward a little for a day or a week; but in those four years no German set foot in that city of heroic ruins except as a prisoner. The 26th Battalion celebrated Dominion Day--July 1st--by raiding a convenient point of the German front line. The assault was made by a party of twenty-five "other ranks" commanded by two junior officers. It was supported by the fire of our heavy field guns and heavy and medium trench mortars. Sergts. Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill were of the party, but Dick Starkley was not. Dick could not be spared for it from his duties with his platoon, for he was in acting command during the enforced absence of Lieut. Smith, who was suffering at a base hospital from a combination of gas and fever. The men from New Brunswick were observed by the garrison of the threatened trench while they were still on the wrong side of the inner line of hostile wire, and a heavy but wild fire was opened on them with rifles and machine guns. But the raiders did not pause. They passed through the last entanglement, entered the trench, killed a number of the enemy and collected considerable material for identification. Their casualties were few, and no wound was of a serious nature. Hiram Sill was dizzy and bleeding freely, but cheerful. One small fragment of a bomb had cut open his right cheek, and another had nicked his left shoulder. Sacobie carried him home on his back. It was a little affair, remarkable only as a new way of celebrating Dominion Day, and differed only in minor details from hundreds of other little bursts of aggressive activity on that front.