The Emma Gees

Bouchard
Lance-Corporal Machine Gun Section Twenty-first Canadian Infantry Battalion
Killed in Action, at Courcellette September 15th 1916
In Flanders' fields the crosses stand-- Strange harvest for a fertile land! Where once the wheat and barley grew, With scarlet poppies running through. This year the poppies bloom to greet Not oats nor barley nor white wheat, But only crosses, row by row, Where stalwart reapers used to go. Harvest in Flanders --Louise Driscoll
When the final history of this war is written, it is doubtful if any other name will so appeal to the Canadian as Ypres and the Ypres Salient; every foot of which is hallowed ground to French, Belgians, British and Colonials alike; not a yard of which has not been consecrated to the cause of human liberty and baptized in the blood of democracy.
Here the tattered remnants of that glorious contemptible little army, in October, 1914, checked the first great onrush of the vandal hordes and saved the channel ports, the loss of which would have been far more serious than the capture of Paris and might, conceivably, have proved the decisive factor in bringing about a Prussian victory in the war.
Here the first Canadian troops to fight on the soil of Europe, the Princess Pat's, received their trial by fire and came through it with untarnished name, and here, also, the First Canadian Contingent withstood the terrible ordeal of poison gas in April, 1915, and, outnumbered four to one, with flank exposed and without any artillery support worthy of mention, hurled back, time after time, the flower of the Prussian army, and, in the words of the Commanding General of all the British troops: saved the situation.
Here, too, as was fitting, we received our baptism of fire (Second Canadian Division), as did also the third when it came over.
For more than a year this salient was the home of the Canadian soldier and Langemarck, St. Julien, Hill 60, St. Eloi, Hooge, and a host of other names in this sector, have been emblazoned, in letters of fire, on his escutcheon.