Chez ma Grand'mère. May 17th 1915. My dear Bernard: Just a few lines to tell you how things are going: at present "jake"! (with the levas up.) I am at Netley Hospital for the time being: I was hit on the 28th [?] with a small piece of shrapnel in the right knee, just below the knee-cap. It happened at about 11.0 at night six days after that little scrap of ours. I may as well give you some idea of events leading up this engagement, as far as we were concerned. I will go back to the beginning of April and just give you a rough & very poorly worded sketch of events. The whole Canadian Division was billeted round Estaires: I am glad to say we were right in the town: a most extraordinary coincidence as our Battalion was normally tucked away somewhere, in the worst billets. In Fr. we were certainly in luck's way: I and six others were in the Station Master's Office. There was an exceedingly nice woman & her daughter in charge of the Station House: the husband and her son ([?] 15) had been taken off as prisoners when the Allemands were in the town in October, I think. he has never been heard of since. Madame was awfully good to us: she insisted on using her kitchen as a dining room: and did most of our cooking. On April 1st (the great Bismarck's birthday) we expected some big aeroplane stunt to be brought off: and sure enough, at 8:30 (I was getting ready for H.Q. Guard) along came an aeroplane with crosses on the planes I thought they would be sure to have a crack at the station. They were right overhead. Suddenly hissssssssssss! I can tell you the suspense was enormous and the bomb seemed to take years to come down. What a relief when it dropped near the Gasworks behind us! and did no damage. At 9.0 there was a Battalion Parade to read out a Court Martial sentence (merely reducing a Corporal to the Ranks). The Bosch Plane was still flying round and our guns putting a patch-work of white puffs round it. The Battalion assembled in a field back of H.Q. and suddenly hisses again. I waited to see which part of the 16th was going to get smudged out. That was my first experience of feeling scared: I certainly did then! Well sir, after about 5 and a half years or so, an empty shrapnel casing hit a house nearby and buried itself in the sidewalk! Relief no. 2 in less than 1 hour, & on "le Poisson Avril" too! From Estaires we moved to between St Sylveste Cappel and Cassel. We went by way of Strazelle & Caestre: missing out Méteren this time. On April 15th, after all kinds of route marching etc., we moved on to Steendooire[?]. Next day we moved by Motor Bus to Vlameitinghe: where we lunched. at 2.30 we marched off to take over some French Trenches beyond Ypres. We got to them close on midnight: they were situated a considerable way past St Julien, on the St Julien-Ypres road. It was the blackest night I have ever seen. Of course, we moved in single file. All one could do was to "sense" the man in front of you. We got there all intact though. Just as we were getting into the trench I fell right up to above my waist into a shellhole full of water! Rifle, overcoat and full pack! I struggled out: took a short step forward and went in again! When I got out again I stood still and waited quite a long time for a Bosch Flare light to show me the best way out! It came up eventually and I managed to make the trench alright. The trenches here are of the fort type, with connecting parapets built up from the ground level. From the state they were in when we took over, I should say the french had run them up in two or three days and then never done any more work on them at all! The connecting parapets were about 4 feet high: an all you could say of them was that they were sight proof! In the forts they had a wall a little over five feet high, the bottom two and a half feet only being bullet-proof. None of it being shell-proof! We got all the sand-bags we could, and worked like hell at nights on the Forts. The fort I was in, we raised a six-foot bullet-proof parapet: and did not feel happy till we had done so. The French ideas of sanitation were of the crudest: I never saw such a dirty mess as there was in the Forts: and behind the line too. They had no latrine of any kind, but just seemed to dump wherever they happened to be: in the Forts or behind. We had a hell of a job cleaning up. They shelled us all the time with shrapnel and those bl--d- trench Mortars: I can tell you it was pretty lively for about 4 days. They did very little rifle shooting: just a flank-fire from Snipers who, however, did some considerable damage. Well, we were relieved on Tuesday night April 20th. That afternoon the Bosches opened a heavy Artillery fire on Ypres: in consequence of which we could not go to our proper billets, but found some farms about ¾ mile NNW of the town. The result of this was that we lost the transport and got no food till well on into the afternoon of next day. On the following day (Thurs 22nd) we again moved & this time a little further west and across the Canal. We began to get settled in and looked forward to a good night's rest: and some feeding. We'd only had two hot meals in 6 days. Suddenly about 3 in the afternoon we got the order to stand to. Of course we thought it was just an ordinary precautionary scare, such as we'd often had before. So consequently we did not take much trouble to pack extra rations. We got out in a field behind the Billet along a hedge, awaiting developments. Presently a lot of dopey-looking Zouaves came rushing by from the firing line: all doped with Gas. Meanwhile shells were dropping everywhere and a tremendous bombardment of Ypres was going on. The inhabitants were pouring out of the town; men, women & children; old and young. They were mostly hitting in a northwesterly direction across the fields: whither, I don't know. Well, at 5:30 we got word to line the West Bank of the Canal and dig ourselves in. At about 7.15 we had to form up again ready to move off. We were told that the Germans had beaten through the French lines somewhere in the neighbourhood of St Julian & Zonnebeke. They were reported to have taken up a position on the borders of a wood in which were 4 A.70: the belonged, I believe, to a London Territorial Brigade and were erroneously reported in paper as being Canadian. The little job for us and the 10th Battalion was to move them out take the wood at all costs. So off we moved in the dark. We advanced to within about a mile of the wood: and formed up the two Battalions into four lines. We flung off our packs, and some people their haversacks too. [Remainder of letter missing]