But, with the great majority there was little of the desire either for
military glory or for revenge. Their country had laid upon them a duty
for the discharge of which they had been preparing themselves for many
months, and that duty they were ready to perform. More than that, they
were eager to get at it and get done with it, no matter at what cost.
With all this, too, there was an underlying curiosity as to what the
thing would be like "up there." Far down below all their feelings
there lay an unanswered interrogation which no man dared to put to his
comrade, and which indeed few men put to themselves. That interrogation
was: "How shall I stand up under the test?"
The camp was overrun with rumours from returning battalions of the
appalling horrors of the front line. Ever since that fateful 22nd of
April, 1915, that day of tragedy and of glory for the Canadian army, and
for the Canadian people, the Ypres salient, the point of honour on the
western front from Dixmude to Verdun, had been given into the keeping of
the Canadian army.
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