Excerpt: ...some of the Canadian Mounted Rifles (who had long been dismounted), and units from another Canadian division (at said Intelligence) and the British, stronger than they had ever been, in men, and guns, and shells, and aircraft, and all material of war, were going to be launched in a great offensive. No more trench warfare. No more dying in ditches. Out into the open, with an Army of Pursuit (Rawlinson''s) and a quick break-through. It was to be "The Great Push." The last battles were to be fought before the year died again, though many men would die before that time. Colonel Shaw of the 1st Battalion, C.M.R., rallied eighty men out of the Cumberland dugouts, and died fighting. The Germans were kept at bay for some time, but they flung their bombs into the square of men, so that very few remained alive. When only eight were still fighting among the bodies of their comrades these tattered and blood-splashed men, standing there fiercely contemptuous of the enemy and death, were ordered to retire by Major Palmer, the last officer among them. Meanwhile the battalions in support were holding firm in spite of the shell-fire, which raged above them also, and it was against this second line of Canadians that the German infantry came up