So thorough had been the preparations, and so well organised the raid, that an account of it was published in the orders of the French Army as an example of efficient preparation.
The prisoners taken in the Petite Douve affair had boasted of the preparations they were making for a gas attack on a scale hitherto unknown, and on the Sunday before Christmas the enemy made another attempt to gain the Ypres salient by this means.
Early in the morning of the 20th the smell of gas was evident even down as far as our position a few miles south of the salient, and our guns began a desultory bombardment of the enemy lines. Thinking we were as deficient in artillery as in the previous April, the enemy infantry advanced in mass formation about 9 o'clock. Then our artillery did open fire. About noon another attack was made, and also failed without a yard of our line being lost.
There were no further attempts!
On Christmas Eve we were relieved by the Toronto Battalion and marched out to rest billets in divisional reserve.
It was a weird march out. Not a rifle was fired nor a single flare shot up from either trench as the two battalions interchanged.
We wondered if on the morrow there would be the handshaking and hymn-singing that had characterised the first Christmas of the war; a routine order had been published forbidding such demonstrations of good feeling, but it was hardly necessary—flame projectors and asphyxiating gas had attended to that!
Everything was very peaceful in the little hamlet when we arrived, however. It was a clear, starlit night, a little snow in the fields, and the dark silhouettes of the houses and church loomed up against the clear sky. The little church was in darkness—no midnight mass was being sung this year—and we slipped into our various billets in silence, very tired and not a little homesick.
Christmas Day the men were marched into Bailleul, where a big dinner was given them by the officers of the battalion. In the evening another dinner was held for the officers themselves. There were the usual toasts and speeches, and before the party broke up Captain George T. Richardson asked for a few minutes' silent prayer for those who would not be present at our next dinner. It was a wonderful tribute to his sincerity that this was granted, for the evening was well advanced, and soldiers, as a rule, dislike having their religion tampered with by anyone but chaplains and other authorised personages.
Poor George! he was the first of us to go but a few weeks later!