"No, we didn't, sir."
"Well, you thought it was going to be a walk through to Berlin, didn't you?"
"Why, no. We thought it was the other way about, sir," I ventured.
He shifted: "Well, what do you think of us anyhow?"
"Your artillery was all right but your infantry was no good." I began to feel shaky again. However, he took that calmly enough.
"Oh! So our infantry was no good."
"We could have held them all right, sir."
He ruminated on that a moment, rumbled in his throat and abruptly changed the subject, in an unpleasant fashion, however.
"You're the fellows we want to get hold of. You cut the throats of our wounded."
I denied it and we argued back and forth over that for several minutes, and very heatedly. He referred to St. Julien and said that this thing had occurred there. I said and quite truthfully that we had not been at St. Julien, that we were in the Imperial and not the Canadian Army and had been spectators in near-by trenches of the St. Julien affair. I even went into some detail to explain that we were a special corps of old soldiers who, not being able to rejoin their old regiments, had at the outbreak of war formed one of their own and had been accepted as such and sent to France months ahead of the Canadian contingent. I added that I myself had just rejoined the regiment, having got my "Blighty" in March at St. Eloi and as proof of my other statements I further volunteered that I was one of the 2nd Gordons and after the South African War had gone to Canada where I had finished my reserve several years since.