Eloi, and stopping them again at Sanctuary Wood.
In the summer of 1916 fourteen thousand of us went down before German
cannon, but still they did not break our lines. This was known as the third
battle of Ypres.
From Ypres we went to the Somme, and it was on the Somme that we met our
Australian cousins who jokingly greeted us with the statement "We're here
to finish what you started," and we fired back, "Too bad you hadn't
finished what you started down in Gallipoli!"
It was not very long before both were engaged in that terrible battle of
the Somme, where to Canadian arms fell the honor of taking the village of
Courcellette. We plugged right on and soon we put the "Vim" into Vimy, and
took Vimy Ridge. As I write we are marking time in front of Lens.
At Ypres we started our great casualty lists with ten thousand. To-day over
one hundred twenty-five thousand Canadian boys have fallen, and there are
over eighteen thousand who will never come back to tell their story.
If the generals of the British Army were proud of us in 1915, I wonder how
they feel to-day?
CHAPTER XIV
"THE BEST O' LUCK--AND GIVE 'EM HELL!"
Imagine a bright crisp morning in late September.
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