enfilade the enemy's trenches on the left. If the Germans rushed his own position, he was to disable his guns and retire with his men. After fighting valiantly for a time, the enemy charged, whereupon Cotton, instead of retiring, coolly hauled both guns out of their emplacements and turned them on the advancing Germans. He and his men continued firing until all were slain, and lay a heap of mangled flesh about their guns.

On the edge of the craters the bodies were seen of a stalwart Sergeant-Major of the Mounted Rifles and two privates of the Princess Patricia's. Lying around them and beneath them were the bodies of no fewer than twelve Germans whom they had slain with the bayonet.

By half-past five o'clock the enemy had penetrated and possessed themselves of about a mile of our front line trenches in the middle of the arc they had attacked with such demoniac force. The trenches south of Hooge for 1,000 yards we still held, and also the front east of Hill 60. After nightfall the Germans, renewing their bombardment, pushed on 700 yards further towards Zillebeke, and proceeded to entrench themselves firmly. For the moment their artillery had won them an advantage, but the price they had paid was at least as terrible as our own--how terrible we shall not know until the close of the War, and the German official records or the German survivors of this battle speak and tell us.

(Photograph--street in Ypres)

I write in haste, surrounded by the terrible evidences of a bloody struggle. It would be impossible within the limits of time and space to recount even a tithe of the outstanding deeds of heroism of yesterday's battle, which waged without cessation until nine at night. Albeit one more incident I must relate. It is the story of the Rev. Gilles Wilken, a parson from Medicine Hat, on the Bow River. At the outbreak of war Wilken flung aside his surplice and enlisted as a private. He came to England with his battalion, where his talent for ministration and good works could not be concealed, and he was promptly, when a vacancy occurred, appointed chaplain. Having on this day, in Sanctuary Wood, done all he could for the dead and dying, Wilken felt it his duty to strike a blow of sterner sort for his country. He seized a rifle, wielding it with accuracy and effect as long as his ammunition lasted, and then went after the Germans with a bayonet. After one particularly fierce thrust the weapon broke. Whereupon this astounding parson, baring his arms, flew at one brawny Boche with his fists, and the last seen of him he was lying prone and overpowered.

The outstanding feature of the day was, however, not the numerous traits of individual valour. It is the marvellous tact and moral impetus of the officers and non-commissioned officers, and the discipline and cohesion of the men which I find evokes most praise. When one was struck down and unable to give or receive orders, another took his place automatically, and was obeyed implicitly and instantly. In one battalion only two officers survived. In some other battalions the losses have been very severe. One lost three-quarters of its strength. But the morale of all ranks was unimpaired, and the troops, who had endured this day an experience which might well weaken the purpose of the strongest and stoutest, were fit and ready at dawn on the morrow to undertake a counter-attack.

II.

June 4th.

That Friday night, while the enemy was preparing to hold his new front, and the stretcher-bearers and Red Cross workers on both sides were bringing in their wounded and dead, General Sir Julian Byng, the Corps Commander, was planning a counter-attack to recover the ground which had been lost. This attack was delayed for some hours, owing to the necessity for assembling artillery in such force as to silence the enemy, who still maintained a vigorous and occasionally an intense bombardment.

The advance was timed for six o'clock in the morning, but still the barrage did not lift, and it was nearly half-past nine when our troops moved forward in earnest. These troops belonged to the First and Third Divisions, but the brunt of the fighting was borne by survivors of the 7th and 8th Brigades of the latter Division, assisted by two companies of the King's Royal Rifles, an Imperial regiment which had been serving in the Salient to the left of the Canadian troops.

A bombardment of a vigour almost equal to that of the Germans of the previous day created a shelter for our advancing battalions. The enemy guns replied, and at one time the spectacle was witnessed of a double barrage of appalling intensity. None the less, the Canadians pushed on, and after fighting all day succeeded in reaching a portion of their old front-line trenches in the northern section. On the way thither they came across numbers of enemy dead lying about unburied. But the trenches were battered to pieces, and our troops were not in sufficient strength to hold on until the works could be reconstructed. The same was true of the battalions of the 8th Brigade, who advanced south of Maple Copse and east of Warrington Avenue, although the 49th Battalion, which had lost its commanding officer, Colonel Baker, struggled valiantly for a time to maintain itself. The upshot was that we were forced back to a new front line of trenches near Zillebeke.

The losses of these two days have been grievous--some 7,000 killed and wounded. It is to-day known that the commander of the heroic Third Canadian Division, Major-General Mercer, has fallen. Just as the Huns were making their advance at half-past one o'clock, the General was seen supporting himself against a parapet at the entrance of a dug-out known as the Tube, suffering from shell shock, and there beyond doubt he met his death, and there his body lies buried. A brigade commander and a battalion commander were taken prisoners. Two other colonels, Buller and Baker, have been slain.

The earth is all torn, seared, and fretted hereabouts, but a surprising amount of timber still stands. All through those two fierce days' fighting, wounded men were crawling about or lying motionless for hours, either helpless or to avoid observation. One man told me he had spent two nights on his back in No Man's Land without food, drink, or succour. Another was thrice buried by the effects of the much-vaunted minenwerfer shell--which ploughs up the surrounding earth--and thrice dug out by a passing officer. Machine-guns were repeatedly buried, and then rapidly and diligently excavated and brought by our gallant fellows again into action, much to the enemy's amazement and discomfiture.

It is now Sunday afternoon at Corps Headquarters.

As I write, staff officers hurry to and fro; occasionally a general or a battalion commander dashes by, all deeply preoccupied and intent on the business in hand. Some of them have not slept for three days. The troops who have borne the brunt are now going into rest billets.

As to these two days' struggle, if you were to take all the actions