great guns. Boom upon boom, deep voiced and varied, follows from the
many calibred guns in the darkness, till the night is lurid and the
ground beneath us quivers with the earthquake of bombardment.

High above we hear the piercing shriek of the shells speeding to their
fatal mark, and below the crash of the exploding shells of the enemy,
which toss the earth in dark waves into the air in the black surf of
war. Gun after gun now joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in
a hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The whole horizon is lit up
and aflame. The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns,
as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey
lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day,
and like the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while
the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great
star hangs suspended almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole
battlefield, and now a burning farmhouse or exploding ammunition dump
illuminates the sky as from some vast subterranean furnace flung open
upon the heavens. All the long sullen night the earth is rocked by
slow intermittent rumbling, till with the silent dawn the birds wake
and the war-giants sink for a few hours in troubled sleep. Then the
new day breaks and the war-planes climb in the clear morning air to
begin the battle afresh.

But let us turn from the hard-won ground of Messines to some of the men
who fought over it and survived. Here is a young American, Fred R----,
a graduate of Johns Hopkins, who fought in this battle with the
Canadians, and who told us in his own words the story of those brief
hours.