There was the
mutter and rumble and roar of great guns. There was the groan of wounded
and the gasp of dying.
It was glorious. It was terrible. It was inspiring. Through an inferno of
destruction and death, of murder and horror, we lived because we must.
Early in the night the Fighting Tenth and the Sixteenth charged the wood
of St. Julien. Through the undergrowth they hacked and hewed and fought and
bled and died. But, outnumbered as they were, they got the position and
captured the battery of 4.7 guns that had been lost earlier in the day.
This night the Germans caught and crucified three of our Canadian
sergeants. I did not see them crucify the men, although I saw one of the
dead bodies after. I saw the marks of bayonets through the palms of the
hands and the feet, where by bayonet points this man had been spitted to a
barn door. I was told that one of the sergeants was still alive when taken
down, and before he died he gasped out to his saviors that when the Germans
were raising him to be crucified, they muttered savagely in perfect
English, "If we did not frighten you before, this time we will.
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