Around the
Canadian Advanced Dressing Station was a crowd of wounded Turcos and
Canadians waiting their turn to have their wounds dressed. All the
civilians were loading their donkey or dog carts with household goods
and setting out towards Ypres, sometimes driving their cows before
them.
As we climbed into the car, which had been placed for shelter behind
the strongest looking wall in the town, and slowly started for Ypres,
a section of the 10th Canadian Battalion came along with our friend,
Major Maclaren, whom I had talked to at Brielen earlier in the
afternoon, at its head. I waved my hand to him and called "good luck."
He waved his hand in answer with a cheery smile. A couple of hours
later he was wounded and was sent back in the little battalion Ford
car, with another officer, to the ambulance in Vlamertinge. While
passing through Ypres a shell blew both officers' heads off.
At the fork of the roads, Lt.-Col. Mitchell of Toronto, of the
headquarters staff, who was directing traffic, came over and asked us
if we had seen certain Canadian battalions pass by. We told him we had
and we shook hands as we wished each other "good luck," not knowing
whether we should ever meet again. We picked up a load of wounded
Turcos and took them into the ambulance at Ypres. Fresh shell holes
pitted the road and dead horses lay at the side of it.
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