by Sergeant Edgar Harold, 19th Battalion
I’d spent the previous night at Mont St. Eloi, having come up from a month’s stay at the Cups Yards at Hersin Coupigny. The trip up to the battalion lines at “Mill Street” over muddy roads and shell torn trails was far from being a pleasure jaunt. Added to the natural trepidation one had going into the unknown was the knowledge of the ground we were crossing. Here rumour said 80,000 Frenchmen had died in a vain effort to win the ridge. Rusted French carbines and pieces of equipment sticking up through the mud and snowy water bore mute testimony to the truth of this. We cast half fearful glances into every shell hole for dead bodies we had been told would still be seen from the last big show on April 9th, but the sight of which happily we were spared by the Herculean efforts of the mopping up parties.
The reality of war had come home to us very forcibly the night before when we had met some of the boys from the old Sportsman’s Battalion at the “Y” at St. Eloi. They had the advantage over us of a month up the lines and gave us the news that Riley Helm, an old boy from my section in the old battalion, had been killed the day before. Poor Riley, we had slept in the same tent all the previous summer at Camp Borden.
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