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During the previous night, our guns had put up a practice barrage, a large number of the guns close to our billets, the noise and number of the guns was almost unbelievable, but most extraordinary was the rapidity with which one got used to it and slept through the din. In fact the noise after a time had a soporific effect.

Above 1/2 an hour after we started, the guns commenced firing. When we passed through Mt. St. Eloi we struck the main road, and by this time we had every gun in action. One can only describe it by saying that it was like continuous thunder. The sound of no single gun could be distinguished, but just one long roar. As we went along the main road, the hundreds of guns were a little behind us, and their shells hurtled through the air just over our heads.

It was along this main road that I was most impressed by both the wonder and horror of war. The road was just one mass of traffic passing both ways. Piccadilly Circus on a wet night was nothing to it. The night was very black. The road very very muddy (ankle deep) with ruts and holes everywhere, and along it in both directions [?] huge 3 ton lorries, smaller lorries, 6-8 & 14 horse teams hauling guns and munitions, whilst wagon carts and vehicles of all descriptions were ploughing along, the horses and mules deadbeat - poor beasts, they were overworked and over exposed and horribly underfed, and their dead bodies were seen everywhere, worked hard until they sank down and died. Blocks in the traffic were incessant, caused by a lorry with a wheel in the ditch, or off, a horse down, or some animal or vehicle broadside on, [illegible], and in & out most of the traffic, marched

BC Archives, MS-0089 Box 1 File 5 GLASSFORD, Deborah Florence (Leighton). Vancouver Correspondence inward, 1917.

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