As we continued our advance from the Fringe Trench to gain our third objective, I noticed a German soldier advancing towards us. He appeared to be about 18 years of age, and had his steel helmet on. His gas mask box was thrown over his shoulder. He did not appear to be armed and, as he advanced with his hands up I thought I heard him shout what I presumed to be "_Kamerad, Kamerad_!" How he escaped our barrage was a miracle. I passed him on to the rear.
Suddenly I was surprised to hear machine gun bullets strike the ground around me. Two of my boys fell face forward, wounded. We immediately all fell flat and I at once thought that someone had blundered. I naturally thought it might be possible that it was our own machine gunners, as we had not observed any machine gun emplacements as we advanced.
I cautiously crawled around on my stomach, and I saw not far in our rear the top of some German steel helmets. I knew at once that we had passed by and overlooked a German machine gun emplacement.
I divided the platoon into two sections. We crawled back to the right and left flank of this machine gun emplacement. Our moppers up, one company of the 22nd French Canadian Battalion, had not time to get to this point. When within striking distance, we fired a few rifle grenades and threw some bombs. Then all was silent from that quarter and we knew that the bombs had done the trick. I went over to this German machine gun emplacement. It was a "Mebu" type and our artillery had knocked the top off it. I found that we had exterminated the whole squad with the exception of the machine gun officer, who was badly wounded. He was half reclining and half kneeling on what was left of his machine gun. He struggled to his feet and came to attention as I reached him. He expected that we would shoot him, but we of the Anglo-Saxon race play the game fair. So I had him sent to the officer who had command of another company that had to look after prisoners. We had now lost time; we turned, doubled forward and gained our third objective. Our barrage had lifted for two intervals of 100 yards and was now playing upon the _Zwischen Stellung_ trench, our battalion's final objective.
We had now some distance to go. As we proceeded with our advance, I heard a loud shout from the boys, who excitedly pointed to the rear. But this time, it was with a feeling of relief that I saw four tanks looming up in the distance. They were firing away beyond us at the retreating Huns. Our barrage was still playing upon the _Zwischen Stellung_ trench. We moved along quickly. I noticed the boys were coolly smoking cigarettes.