"We were kept pretty busy," wrote a friend, "doing rapid fire, and lost quite a few from shell fire. But our artillery had the time of their lives, and fired pretty steadily the whole three days of the show."
Later he wrote that they were moving northward—probably to Hill 60—and we could expect there would be something doing shortly.
It was not to Hill 60 that the Canadian Division went, but further northward in the Ypres salient to the left of the 27th Division, where the "Princess Pats" were winning immortality at St. Eloi.
So the days wore on, the surplus officers chafing at the monotony of drill on a barrack square, relieved as it was by "Thés Dansants" at the Metropole and promenades along the Leas at Folkestone.
Then one day a medical officer dropped a sure tip. He had been warned to prepare beds for a thousand casualties—the Canadians were in something big at last!
Just how big it was we realised a week later when the newspapers broke forth into flamboyant headlines, "CANADIANS SAVED SITUATION," "FOUR GUNS RECAPTURED," and other startling sentences that danced before the eyes.
Lyte and the writer were returning from some light festivities, when the hoarse cry "All about the Canadians" arrested their attention. Papers were hurriedly bought, and the brief vague lines of the official communiqué eagerly scanned. "By Jove!" was Lyte's exclamation; "but isn't that great!" The writer, however, hardly heard him; he was thinking of the many good friends who had taken part and the price they had to pay, and his answer was the monosyllabic "Huh!" of the aborigine.
That evening we packed our kits.