We remained here three and a half months and then were moved to Kemmel to the C-4 trenches, where we spent the winter. Here I was taken sick and sent to the hospital at Bailleu, and returned to duty again at Cambrai, and thence went to St. Quentin.
Remained at St. Quentin until September 17th, when I had a piece of shrapnel lodge in my arm and was burned by a shell while trying to dig out a comrade in a similar predicament, except that he died before we got him out. I was buried, but conscious, for four hours and twenty minutes, and I thought of every event of my life in that time. When finally rescued, the fresh air and reaction were too much for me, and I lost consciousness, which I did not regain until I was in England in the Duchess of Connaught's Hospital. I had been sent there by way of Le Havre and remained six months in bed in a plaster cast. I was then returned to a hospital ship and taken to St. John, New Brunswick, where I received electrical and massage treatment. From St. John I went to the convalescent hospital at Fredericton, N. B., and was discharged on August 19, 1918.
A NIGHT ADVENTURE
AS TOLD BY PRIVATE ALBERT FRANKLIN EDWARDS, NO. 6857, 1ST BATTALION, 1ST BRIGADE, 1ST DIVISION, CANADIAN INFANTRY
ONE night in October, 1915, while on patrol, I found an officer, and a private, of the Prussian Guard, fooling around our wire entanglements. They had evidently been under our fire as the officer was suffering from three abdominal wounds and died as I was trying to drag him into our lines.
The private was a big fellow about six feet three inches tall and was furious at being captured. As I had him at my bayonet's point he gave me no trouble, but when we arrived at our lines he took it out on the sentry by spitting at him and slapping him in the face.
We sat Mr. Prussian on the firing step and told him a few things that would not look well in this book, and he finally spoke in English, when we called the escort to get what information we could from him. He asked after some friends he had made at Columbia College, New York City, where he had been educated. He told us that just before the war broke out he had been called back to Germany, supposedly to attend a military fête, as he was still subject to military service. He had no idea, he said, that he was going to be sent to war and he had been drugged and sent into battle, forced on by officers in the rear. After we had "pumped him dry" he was handed over, together with fourteen other prisoners, who were taken the same night, and sent to the cage, four miles to the rear. On the way to the cage he complained to a soldier, in the guard accompanying the prisoners, of the difficulty of marching through the mud, which was very deep. The guard told him he should be thankful that he was not in his (the guard's) place, as he had to walk back again.
I should have stated before that I cut off the buttons from the officer's uniform when he died and kept them together with his field glasses as souvenirs. I have them still as no one has claimed them.