Our artillery had plenty of ammunition. Our light guns were placed at 400 yards from the front line and the heavy artillery at one and a half miles, and some pieces as far as four miles away. The famous French Africans, called Senegalese, were fighting here with us. The Boches set fire to the City of Ypres in the night, and I watched its sullen glare against the sky. The civilian populace went running by, in dreadful condition. That night, of my friends, died Vaillant, Poitras, and Bond, all of Montreal, and two others. Poirer and Lefebre of Montreal and O. Wiseman, also my friends, had been killed during the day. Yet I lived! Ypres was a famous battle, one of the greatest of the war, I think, till this terrible onslaught at Verdun. Our division (Canadian) reached from Ypres (Belgium) to Poelcappelle Road. At 2 P.M., before the gas overtook me, I was sent out between the lines with another man to examine the wire entanglements. We heard a sound as of some one handling pipes, but discovered nothing more. Then the Boches sent up their flares (skyrockets whose bursting bombs turned night into daylight) and we lay on the ground motionless. In the darkness which followed, we crept back over the heaps of dead toward our line. When I had almost reached the trench, another great flare burst right over us, and I had to lie still for several moments until the welcome darkness gave me an opportunity to drop into the trench again. Men were dying from the gas, their eyes popping, their faces green, and crying: "Water! Water! I'm choking! Air! Air! Air!" It is a frightful thing to hear your friends crying like that. I saw one die right before my eyes, rolling upon the ground as if mad, tearing at his chest. His fingers were crooked after his death, his body full of blue spots and his mouth white. Another poor wretch fell two or three feet from me, dying from the gas. He was sucking water from a dirty handkerchief. VII--THIS IS WHAT THE GERMANS FORCED UPON THE WORLD Listen. Suppose you were fighting in a trench. The wind comes toward you, foul with odors from nameless, twisted, torn bodies unburied between you and the Boches. Near you are your brave comrades. Some lie wounded and dying in agony on the trench bottom. The bullets zing-zing eternally over your head. There is a mighty swelling from an organ more sonorous than ever human organist played. The rockets are bursting; the flares shedding white glares over the torn ground. Your coffee grinders are mowing them down. Then, rising from somewhere near by, comes the gas, yellow or green. Then comes a sudden stinging in your nose. Your eyes water and run. You breathe fire. You suffocate. You burn alive. There are razors and needles in your throat. It is as if you drank boiling hot tea. Your lungs flame. You want to scratch and tear your body. You become half blind, half wild. Your head aches beyond description, you vomit, you drop exhausted, you die quickly.