"We got everything ready for the enemy, the trenches dug and the guns fixed, and then came the worst job of all—waiting. For thirty-six hours we lay there watching and listening for the first sign of the Germans. Then for five hours the battle lasted without cessation.
"Having brought my transport wagons up to the firing lines with my motor, I had to help load the guns. Shells were flying and bursting all round us. I was wounded by a splinter from one of the shells, but as it was only a flesh wound I bound it up and went on with my work.
"Now, the enemy seemed to be beating us, then again they retreated. All the time my comrades were falling around me, and the Germans were falling in hundreds too. So thick were the enemy's dead that when the advance was given we simply had to force the motor up and over heaps of bodies—there was nothing else for it.
"At last the battle, so far as the batteries in our neighbourhood were concerned, went in our favour, and we were ordered to follow the retreating Germans. In doing this six of us got lost, and for four days we were tramping about without a mouthful of food or drink!
"By day we lay concealed in the corn or grass fields, and by night we crept along, without any guide, only hoping and praying—I've prayed many times in the past, but never so much as on these nights—that all would come right.
"On the first day we were fairly well, on the second we were very hungry, on the third our tongues were hanging out, and two of my comrades went mad.
"On the fourth night we fell in with a British ambulance section and were taken into camp. As I was passing an ambulance tent I heard some one singing:
'I'm a child of a King,
I'm a child of a King,
With Jesus my Saviour,
I'm a child of a King.'
I asked who it was, and was told it was a Salvationist.
"In the stillness of another night from one of the tents I heard—