CHAPTER VII

SANCTUARY WOODS

(_3rd Battle of Ypres_)


The third battle of Ypres commenced June 2, lasting until June 15, 1916.
Sanctuary Woods was a cluster of trees, comprising about one thousand in
number, and they were the very finest and noblest specimens of their
various types,--oak, elm, ash and beech. They were located just one mile
outside the city in a northwesterly direction. One of our trenches ran
northeast and southwest through the middle of the woods.

The line had been exceptionally quiet for the space of a week. My
battery of six guns was located at a château known as the Belgian
Garden, about 600 yards in the rear of the wood. Two guns were ordered
into the wood as a sacrifice battery, and my usual luck attached me to
one of them. We were located in a dry ditch, 300 yards back from the
front line. Our orders, as usual in the case of the sacrifice battery,
were to wait until the Germans, when they broke through, if they did,
were almost in line with our guns.

The morning of the 2nd was a beautiful summer's day; nature was in
perfect repose; the birds sang gayly, the humming of bees and fragrance
of flowers filled the air. We were busily engaged making our morning
ablutions in some shell holes when, like a bolt from the blue, hell
broke loose in the form of the most violent bombardment I had
experienced up to that time, lasting twenty minutes, missiles of every
kind raining down on us on all sides. "Stand to!"--and we waited.