Some months later, curiously enough, we found ourselves opposite the same regiment. Neither side forgot we were both Canadian, and steadfastly kept our treaty of peace. They did not consider that rough note a "scrap of paper." Not a single shot was fired and only one man was killed, and he by a stray bullet. Because friendships started easily between hostile bodies, they kept moving a regiment from one part of the trenches to another, that we might not get too friendly with our enemies. We had no heart in the butchery, Germans or we French Canadians. V--"WE CRAWL FORTH TO DEATH" A big part of trench warfare is the mining operations. I feared the mines more than anything, I think. It was more terrible than gas poisoning to think that at any moment the earth would be rent and you would be thrown a thousand ways at once. The mining operations were carried on by trained miners, who burrow along under ground about fifteen feet below the surface. The engineers in charge figure out just how far they must dig to reach positions under the German lines, and when they have done so a fuse is run in--and Fritz and Hans and their friends jump fifty feet toward heaven. We do this; the Germans do it. It is bad work. And on both sides, we have to keep men listening all the time for the digging. When it is discovered that a mine is coming our way, we sink a tunnel deeper still and blow up their tunnel. And the Germans do the same thing with our mines. The soldier in the trench never knows when he may be blown into small pieces--and that is why we always preferred to risk uncertain dangers between the lines at night, instead of lying down in the wet trench, helplessly waiting for death. I never felt so secure, indeed, as when I was on guard between the trenches, through all the night I could hear the bullets go over me.... And I have seen men of good health grow so weary of the trenches that they have simply stood up at noon-day. Some machine-guns swiftly ended them. And others, as I have written, simply stick up their hands above the trench top and bullets trim off their fingers. I was twenty days at Laventie. We only had the regular rifle shooting there, and were fortunate in losing not a single man of our 500 by bombs. We then marched to a point about one mile to the right of the now famous Neuve Chapelle, where we caught the Germans by surprise and took nearly 3,000 prisoners.