Canada in war-paint

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CANADA IN WAR-PAINT
By CAPT. RALPH W. BELL
LONDON AND TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
First Published in 1917
There is no attempt made in the little sketches which this book contains to deal historically with events of the war. It is but a small Souvenir de la guerre —a series of vignettes of things as they struck me at the time, and later. I have written of types, not of individuals, and less of action than of rest. The horror of war at its worst is fit subject for a master hand alone.
I have to thank the proprietors of The Globe for their courtesy in allowing the reproduction of “Canvas and Mud” and “Tent Music,” and of the Canadian Magazine for the reproduction of “Martha of Dranvoorde.”
Finally, I feel that I can have no greater honour than humbly to dedicate this book to the officers, N.C.O.’s and men of the First Canadian Infantry Battalion, Ontario Regiment, with whom I have spent some of the happiest, as well as some of the hardest, days of my life.
RALPH W. BELL.
December 11th, 1916.
CANADA IN WAR-PAINT
To those men who, in days of peace, have trained on the swelling, lightly-wooded plains round about Salisbury, no doubt this portion of Old England may seem a very pleasant land. But they have not been there in November under canvas. When the old soldiers of the Canadian contingent heard that we were to go to “the Plains,” some of them said, “S’elp me!” and some a great deal more! It was an ideal day when we arrived. The trees were russet brown and beautiful under the October sun, the grass still green, and the winding road through picturesque little Amesbury white and hard, conveying no hint of that mud for which we have come to feel a positive awe.