My story starts with my capture at the third battle of Ypres. The Fourth Canadian Mounted Rifles were in the front line at Zillebeke. We had been terribly pounded by German artillery, in fact, almost annihilated. After a hideous night, morning, June 2, 1916, dawned beautiful and clear. At 5.30 I turned in for a little sleep with four other fellows who made up the machine-gun crew with me. Lance Corporal Wedgewood, in charge of the gun, remained awake to clean it. I had just got into a sound sleep when it seemed as if the whole crust of the earth were torn asunder in one mammoth explosion, and I found myself buried beneath sandbags and loose earth. I escaped death only by a miracle and managed to dig my way out. A giant shell had blown up our dugout. Two of the boys were killed. "We're in for it," said Wedgewood. "They'll keep this up for a while and they'll come over. We must get the gun out." [Sidenote: German barrage almost wipes out the Fourth.] The gun had been buried by the explosion, but we managed to get it out and were cleaning it up again when another trench mortar shell came over. It destroyed all but 300 rounds of ammunition. Then the bombardment started in earnest. Shells rained on us like hailstones. The German artillery started a barrage behind us that looked almost like a wall of flame; so we knew that there was no hope whatever of help reaching us. Our men dropped off one by one. The walls of our trench were battered to greasy sand heaps. The dead lay everywhere. Soon only Wedgewood, another chap, and myself were left. "They've cleaned us out now. The whole battalion's gone," he said. As far as we could see along the line there was nothing left, not even trenches--just churned-up earth and mutilated bodies. The gallant Fourth had stood its ground in the face of probably the worst hell that had yet visited the Canadian lines and had been wiped out! It was not long before the other fellow was finished by a piece of shrapnel. I was wounded in the back with a splinter from a shell which broke overhead and then another got me in the knee. I bled freely, but luckily neither wound was serious. About 1.30 we saw a star shell go up over the German lines. "They're coming!" cried Wedgewood, and we jumped to the gun. [Sidenote: The two men remaining fire the machine gun.] The Germans were about seventy-five yards off when we got the gun trained on them. We gave them our 300 rounds and did great damage; the oncoming troops wavered and the front line crumpled up, but the rest came on. [Sidenote: Captured by Germans.]