After six days up there in the badly constructed trenches and under continual bombardment, without a hot drink all the time, working like slaves every night, filling sandbags and strengthening the parapets, our appetites spoiled by the sights and stench of the dead "Fritzies," we were at last relieved by our 5th Battalion, and marched into Ypres to the billets, which were in a large mill alongside the Yser Canal.
Ypres at this time was full of the civilian population and Estaminets. Restaurants and the market-place were open, so we had a splendid opportunity to change our diet from the everlasting bully and biscuits.
Two days after we entered Ypres the Germans opened up their great offensive on the 22d of April, where they used their poisonous gases for the first time. They also commenced to shell the town with every sized gun they had, from 18 pounders to their 14-inch Austrian Skoda howitzers, the largest caliber gun used on the western front.
Scores of civilians were killed as they rushed out of the town, and it was pitiful to see the little children lying dead in the streets.
The Germans broke through the Algerians on our left flank under cover of their poisonous gases, which killed thousands of Algerians and our own men in the front line trenches.
Our battalion and the 16th Canadian Scottish were the only reserves in the whole salient, and as the Germans had broken through, things were looking very black for us.
We were instantly summoned to "fall in" and soon we were on our way to fill the gap. We were two thousand men to stop the German divisions in their countless thousands.
An ordinary general would have posted us in a reserve line of trenches until the Germans advanced the next morning, but not so General Alderson, our divisional commander, an English general, who proved himself one of the geniuses of the war. He tried strategy, which was one of the biggest bluffs of the war, and which utterly surprised the Germans.
Instead of waiting for the Germans to swamp us the next morning with their greater superiority of twenty to one man, he ordered us to make a night attack on the Pilkem Woods, where the Germans were massing for their attack.
The attack was made in lines of double companies, 500 men in each of the four lines, A and B Company of our battalion being in the front line and supported by C and D Company, and then the 16th Battalion behind them.