Dick found many old faces replaced by new in the battalion. Enemy snipers, shell fire, sickness and promotion had been at work. Dick acted as assistant adjutant for a couple of weeks and was then posted to a company as second in command and promised his step in rank at the earliest opportunity. In the same company was Lieut. Hiram Sill's platoon. Hiram, busy as ever, had distinguished himself several times since his return and was in a fair way to be recommended for a Military Cross. The commander of the company was a middle-aged, amiable person who had been worked so hard during the past year that he had nothing left to carry on with except courage. At sight of Dick he rejoiced, for Dick had a big reputation. He took off his boots and belt, retired to his blankets and told his batman to wake him when the war was over. The relief was too much for him; it had come too late. The more he rested the worse he felt, and at last the medical officer sent him out on a stretcher. Fever and a general breakdown held him at the base for several weeks, and then he was shipped to Blighty. So Dick got a company and his third star, and no one begrudged him the one or the other. The Canadian Corps worked all winter in preparation for its great spring task. The Germans fortified and intrenched and mightily garrisoned along all the great ridge of Vimy, harassed the preparing legions with shells and bombs and looked contemptuously out and down upon us from their strong vantage points. Others had failed to wrest Vimy from them. But night and day the Canadians went on with their preparations. Word that the United States of America had declared war on Germany reached the toilers before Vimy on April 7; and within the week there came a night of gunfire that rocked the earth and tore the air. With morning the gunfire ceased, only to break forth again in lesser volume as the jumping barrages were laid along the ridge; and then, in a storm of wind and snow, the battalions went over on a five-division front, company after company, wave after wave, riflemen, bombers and Lewis gunners. The Canadians were striking after their winter of drudgery. One of our men, a Yankee by birth, went over that morning with a miniature Stars and Stripes tied to his bayonet. We cleared out the Huns and took the ridge; and for days the water that filled the shell holes and mine craters over that ground was red with Canadian blood, and the plank roads were slippery with it from the passing of our wounded. Dick went through that fight in front of his company and came out of it speechless with exhaustion, but unhit. Hiram Sill survived it with his arm in a sling. Maj. Henry Starkley was wounded again, again not seriously. Maj. Patrick Hammond was killed, and Corp. Jim Hammond was carried back the next day with a torn scalp and a crushed knee.