Connecticut western news., 1917-08-09

Boy" said he, "we're at the big show
 at last"
 him. Within sight of the spot where he sat wondering he later fell in action Hnd died. The scene which so i'm pressed him gave us all feeling of great awe Great shells from a thou sand guns were streaking and criss- crossing the sky. Without glasses 1 counted thirty-nine of our observation balloons. Away off in the distance I saw one German captive balloon. The other aircraft were uncountable. They were everywhere, apparently in hun- dredS. There could have been no more wonderful panorama picture of war in It's new aspect.
 Our battalion was in and out of the town of Albert several days waiting tor orders. The battle of Courcelette was then in progress, and the First, Second and Third Canadian divisions were holding front positions at terri ble cost. In the first part of October, 1916, we went in' opposite the fla nous Regina trench. The battle-ground was just miles and miles of debris and shell holes. Before We went to our position the officers and nOn-coms were taken in by scouts to get the lay of the land. These trips were called Cooks tours" On one of them I went through the town of Poizers twice and didn't know it. It had a population of 12,00O before the war. On the spot where it had stood not even a whole brick was left, it seemed. It's demolition was complete. That was an example of the condition of the whole country over which our forces had blasted their way for ten miles since the previous July. There were not even landmarks left.
 The Cooks Tour"
 On the night when we went in to in- spect the positions we were to hold, our scouts, leading us through the flat deS- ert of destruction, got completely turn ed round and took us back through a trench composed of shell holes con nected up until we ran into a battal- ion Of another brigade. The place was dreadful beyond words. The stench of the dead was sickening. In many places arms and legs of dead r!cn stuck out of the trench walls.
 We made fresh start after our blun- der, moving in single file and keepin@ in touch each with the man ahead of him. We stumbled along in the dur,<- ness through this awful labyrinth unt T we ran into some of our own scout at 2 a. m. and found that we we; halfway across No Mans land, sey- eral hundred yards beyond our front line and likely to be utterly wiped out in twenty seconds should the Germans sight us. Fine guides we had on this Cooks tour" At last we reached our proper position, and fifteen min. utes after We got there a whiz-bang, q low explosive murderer, buried me completely. They had to dig lie out. 4 few minutes later a high explosive shell fell in a trench section where three of our men were stationed. All we could find after it exploded were one arm and one leg, which we buried. The trenches were without trench mats, and the mud was from six inches to three feet deep all through them. There were no dugouts, only mcrc,- miserable funk holes," dug where it was possible to dig them without un- covering dead men. We remained in this position four days, from the 17th to the 21st of October, 1916,
 There were reasons, of course, for the difference between. conditions in Belgium and on the Somme On the Somme we were constantly preparing For new advance, and we were only Temporarily established on ground which we had but recently taken after long drumming with big guns. The trenches were merely shell holes con nected by ditches. Cur old and ubiqui- tous and variously useful fT-e"G, the Eandbag, was not present in any e. pacity, and therefore we had no para