We had only forty yards of open ground to cover, but the German artillery and machine guns worked havoc among us. It did not take us long to run those forty yards.
We were soon in the wood, where it was so dark that we could hardly distinguish friend from foe.
I ran in and out among the trees and asked every one I met who he was. I came upon one big fellow. My mouth opened to ask him who he was, when his fist shot out and took me between the eyes. I went down for the count, but I knew who he was—he was a German. I got up as quickly as I could, you may be sure, and swung my rifle to hit him in the head, but the stock struck a tree and splintered. I thought I had broken all my fingers.
I found three wounded men, French, I thought they were, in that gloom. So I carried them into our trench. As I brought in the last one, the officer said, "You are doing good work, Houle." I asked him why he thought so; and he answered: "You have brought in three wounded men and when we put the light on them we found they were Germans." Well, I am glad I saved them. I would have done so anyhow, had I known their nationality. For we were all trained to give a wounded man help, whether he were friend or foe.
Yet it is dangerous work, helping a wounded German. I never helped another, after the experience I had. It was one of the two occasions when I knew with certainty that I killed a man. He was a wounded German soldier. We found him suffering and weak. But we knew we could save his life and were dressing his wound. My back was turned. He took a revolver out of his tunic pocket and fired point-blank at me.
I do not know how I escaped death. Perhaps it was because his hand shook from weakness; perhaps my guardian saint turned aside that death bullet. Anyhow, he had his revolver in his hand. We had to act quickly. My officer spoke a quick word, and I made sure that he would never fire another shot.
Well, we got our machine guns. But the Germans had blown them up, and all our sacrifice of men was in vain.
We were relieved by a British regiment before morning and marched back to our billets to have a rest. I slept all the rest of the night until 11 o'clock the next morning. It was the first rest I had had in forty-eight hours, with only a slice of raw bacon and a piece of bread to eat.
These were little incidents of the bloody battle at Ypres. That afternoon some of the boys brought out tables from a house and placed them in the sun. The civilian populace, in their flight, had left behind their live stock. We caught some hens and rabbits and cooked them in wine we found in a cellar. Ah, that was a feast. I never had a better one.
Yet we were strange feasters. Had some artist been able to paint us he would have had a strong canvas. Some of the boys had their heads bandaged, and nearly all of us were covered with dirt and blood. Some sang for us, though others were downhearted. It surprised me that a few hours after we had faced death and had been suffering untold hardships we could now gather like college boys at a beer night feast and sing.