The wounded who had to take their chance of living because
there was no way to convey them back to shelter--some of them would sit up,
if they possibly could, to load and load again rifles which they lifted
from dead comrades. They would hand us these as our rifles got too hot to
hold. And still the German attacks persisted. Still they came on. And still
we did not budge an inch from our position as it was when the gas first
came over. They did not gain a yard, though when the British reserves at
last reached us, there were only two thousand of us left standing on our
feet; two thousand of us who were whole from out the twelve thousand that
had started in to repel the attack.
The two thousand of us were still in the old position. Still we held in our
safe-keeping the key of the road to Calais, to Paris, to London and
farther. The key to world power which the Hohenzollern coveted.
Behind Ypres to-day there lie four thousand five hundred of the flower of
the Canadian contingent. Four thousand five hundred young men who made the
extreme sacrifice for King, for Flag, for Country, for Right.
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