At seven-thirty o'clock the order came. It was a sharp blast of a whistle, made by the commanding officer. The next moment, led by Lieutenant Butler, the men were up, sliding over the parapet, worming their way through gaps in their own wire entanglements, and forming in the semblance of a line outside. It all took but a minute, and then the rush toward the enemy trenches began. It seemed as though every gun of every calibre in the German army was let loose upon them. The artillery shortened its range and dropped exploding shells among them with dreadful effect. Machine guns mowed them down in swaths. Hand-grenades tore gaps in their ranks. Rifle bullets, hissing like hail, took terrible toll of them. Out of the blackness overhead, lit with the flame of explosions, fell a constant rain of metal, of clods of earth, of fragments of equipment, of parts of human bodies. The experience was wild and terrible beyond description. Pen took no note of the whining and crashing missiles about him, nor of the men falling on both sides of him, nor of the shrieking, gesticulating human beings behind him. Into the face of death, his eyes fixed on the curtain of fire before him, heroic and inspired, he led the remnant of his brave platoon. Through the gaps torn out of the enemy entanglements by the preliminary bombardment, and on into the first line of Boche entrenchments they pounded and pushed their way. Then came fighting indeed; hand to hand, with fixed bayonets and clubbed muskets and death grapples in the darkness, and everywhere, smearing and soaking the combatants, the blood of men. But the first trench, already battered into a shapeless and shallow ravine, was won. Canada was triumphant. The curtain of artillery fire lifted and fell on the enemy's third line. So, now, forward again, leaving the "trench cleaners" to hunt out those of the enemy who had taken refuge in holes and caves. Again the rain of hurtling and hissing and crashing steel. Human fortitude and endurance were indeed no match for this. Again the clubs and bayonets and wild men reaching with blood-smeared hands for each other's throats in the darkness.