"We are French Canadians," we replied with pride.
"Well, we're Canadians, too," came the astonishing answer. "We come from Ontario."
There came a pause. There was no firing. Then the German shouted, "Let me see one of your group; let him stand above the trench, and on my word of honor we shall not fire."
One of us sprang out of the trench and stood up. There fell a deep silence upon the two armies. Then many stood up, and finally the Germans, too, were rising. We talked for hours so, when the officers were not looking. When they looked we did a deal of firing—but our aim was much too high.
One day the Germans threw over a bit of paper wrapped around a stone. "If you don't fire on us, we won't fire on you," some one had written. We kept that strange pact for days, until the officers, discovering this pact of peace, moved us to another part of the trenches.
Some months later, curiously enough, we found ourselves opposite the same regiment. Neither side forgot we were both Canadian, and steadfastly kept our treaty of peace. They did not consider that rough note a "scrap of paper." Not a single shot was fired and only one man was killed, and he by a stray bullet.
Because friendships started easily between hostile bodies, they kept moving a regiment from one part of the trenches to another, that we might not get too friendly with our enemies. We had no heart in the butchery, Germans or we French Canadians.
V—"WE CRAWL FORTH TO DEATH"
A big part of trench warfare is the mining operations. I feared the mines more than anything, I think. It was more terrible than gas poisoning to think that at any moment the earth would be rent and you would be thrown a thousand ways at once. The mining operations were carried on by trained miners, who burrow along under ground about fifteen feet below the surface. The engineers in charge figure out just how far they must dig to reach positions under the German lines, and when they have done so a fuse is run in—and Fritz and Hans and their friends jump fifty feet toward heaven.
We do this; the Germans do it. It is bad work. And on both sides, we have to keep men listening all the time for the digging. When it is discovered that a mine is coming our way, we sink a tunnel deeper still and blow up their tunnel. And the Germans do the same thing with our mines. The soldier in the trench never knows when he may be blown into small pieces—and that is why we always preferred to risk uncertain dangers between the lines at night, instead of lying down in the wet trench, helplessly waiting for death.