My favorite home in the trenches was the dugout in the chalk-pit, which I have just described, and I often wish I could be suddenly transported there and revive old memories. We were planning at this time to make a big gas-attack along the Canadian Corps front. Three thousand gas-cylinders were to be fired by electricity upon the enemy. As I wanted to see this, I made my way to the chalk-pit. The time fixed for the event was five minutes to eleven at night. If the attack was to come off, the word "Japan" was to come through on the wires; if, owing to the wind being in the wrong direction, the attack had to be postponed, the word "Russia" would be sent. At 10.45 I climbed up the steps to the observation post at the back of the chalk-pit (p. 241) and waited. From this point I had a good view of the line towards Lens. I watched the luminous hands of my watch, and they passed the hour of eleven without anything occurring, as the breeze came from the East. I knew the word "Russia," the name of the country that failed us, must have been sent over the wires. It was a queer sensation to sit up there in the dark with no sound but the soft murmur of the night wind in our ears, and the crash of an occasional shell. In those long dark stretches of waste land around me, thousands of human beings on both sides of the line were awake and active, either burrowing like ants in the ground or bringing up rations and war material along the communication trenches. I spent four nights that week in the chalk-pit waiting for the attack, and on March 21st, the night of the day on which the Germans launched their fierce attack against our Fifth Army, my patience was rewarded and the wind was propitious. I mounted the observation post and once more peered over the black stretches of country under the starlit sky. Suddenly, at five minutes to eleven, there was a burst of artillery fire, and over our heads with the usual swishing sound the gas-cylinders sped forth. The German lines were lit with bursting shells. Up went their rockets calling to their artillery for retaliation. I could hear their gas bells ringing to warn their men of the poison that was being poured upon them. It must have been a drenching rain of death. I heard gruesome tales afterwards of desolate enemy trenches and batteries denuded of men. The display of fireworks was magnificent, and the German artillery in the rear were not slow in replying. A great artillery duel like that in the darkness of the night over a waste of ground on which no human habitation could be seen had a very weird effect, and was wonderful to behold. I climbed down into the dugout and made my way through it to the chalk-pit, and then up to an outpost beyond. Here were four men, and I found that three of them had just come up from the base and that this was their first night in the line. They did not seem to be enjoying it as much as I thought they should, so I remarked that it was a beautiful night