At this stage of the game a great surprise was sprung on us. We were keyed up to the highest point, ready for battle, and it was to be our first attack on Fleurs, when of a sudden we were drenched by a deluge of tear shells. A tear shell is one of the meanest of all shells as it gives out a poison that causes the tear ducts to turn almost inside out and the tears, which continually flow, change to a sickly looking green fluid. On top of that, we were also treated to a breakfast of liquid gas and, believe me, I got my fill on that memorable morning. To make sure that I was "out" for good, a stray piece of shrapnel found its way through my helmet and opened a three-inch scalp wound which I had received, as a souvenir, from a Turk at the Dardanelles. The photograph shows how my helmet suffered. The gas attack in the morning temporarily blinded my right eye. However, all these minor affairs did not occur until after I had witnessed the greatest surprise of the war. [Illustration: SERGT. NICHOLSON, SHOWING HIS WOUNDED SKULL AND HELMET WORN WHEN WOUND WAS RECEIVED] It was at the "Zero Hour," and we were nervously awaiting the word to go over, when five huge, lumbering monsters crept forward from our lines. Could this be a bad dream, or were we seeing things. But look! They are spitting fire! They don't stop! Down into a trench and over they go. Barbed wire is like a spider's web to them! God! how they travel, these animated blocks of steel. They look like caterpillars or frogs. They look like every living thing that crawls, and the enemy's shells fall from them like water from a duck's back. Onward they go and we are told to follow them. The rest is history. They were the first five "tanks" used in the war and, at once, were recognized as the most terrible of all engines of destruction. Their presence revived our fellows as though an electric current had passed through them. These first "tanks" were a symbol of our strength and determination to win and when we saw them sweep forward majestically, literally eating up the Hun devils, my heart was glad, and the pain of my wounds vanished. The boys now had a fighting chance against the wicked machinations of the foe. We had gone the enemy one better, at his own game of inventions, and Victory was only a question of building more "tanks" behind which the infantry could find shelter in the attack. THE SUNSHINE OF THE TRENCHES BY SGT. E. D. G. AYLEN, NO. 475337, P.P.C.L.I. ("PRINCESS PATS") C.E.F.