Overhead aeroplanes are humming to and fro, looking far in advance of our troops, seeing the effects of our gunfire, signaling instructions to our artillery, watching the movements of the enemy, and generally acting as the eyes of the army.
In front of us, and to the left, is a crater--an immense hollow in the ground, caused by the explosion by the enemy or ourselves at some earlier stage of the war, of a huge load of dynamite, ammonal or some other high explosive. This crater is situated in what was No Man's Land before April 9 and the great push, at which time it was used as a killing place for our enemies. Now it is a burial place for our friends. The French Government has notified us that if, in burying our dead, we will put the bodies in groups of fifty in each burial plot, they will buy the hallowed ground, keep it in repair, and present it to the British people. And the corps burying party has utilized Lichfield Crater for this purpose, has gathered together fifty or sixty of our gallant dead, and deposited their sacred remains in this spot, erecting over the grave a large wooden cross with the names of the dead upon it. In limestone they have laid out the following epitaph:
To THE BRAVE CANADIANS OF THE SECOND DIVISION WHO GAVE UP THEIR LIVES ON APRIL 9,1917. R. I. P.
What hallowed shrines these cemeteries of fifty will become after the war, when those whose loved ones paid their full measure of devotion in the cause of freedom are able to come to visit the deservedly honored graves of their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, and sweethearts. I visited this little cemetery this morning. As I left it some Tommies passed with a large, red paper balloon sent across by the Germans with the message, "Canadians, we are ready to quit if you are."
But the Canadians, the British, the Americans, or the French, are not yet ready to quit! Nor will they be till the day comes when Prussian militarism is curbed so thoroughly that your boys and mine will not have to give up their lives in conquering it ten years from now!
About a month after the Canadians had taken Vimy Ridge we relieved the ---- Canadian Battalion in the town of Vimy, where our battalion was in support to another battalion holding the front lines some distance in advance. Our Regimental Aid Post on our previous stay in this town had been in the cellar of a brewery near the railway station. Since we had left the shelling in the neighborhood had become so severe that this cellar had been abandoned. It had caught fire and all the woodwork had burned up. Out of curiosity I visited this old cellar on our arrival at Vimy and found it still hot as hades from the heating up of the brick and cement. It was absolutely uninhabitable. So we were forced to search for other quarters.