“The road to Locre,” I muttered to myself, as I saw the direction we had taken.  We were evidently not going to the place we had been rehearsing for.

“Locre?  Ah, yes; and what’s beyond Locre?” I pulled out my map as we went along.  “What’s on beyond Locre?” I saw it at a glance now, and had all my suspicions confirmed.  The word YPRES stood out in blazing letters from the map.  Ypres it was going to be, sure enough.

“It looks like Ypres,” I said, turning to my sergeant, who was silently trudging along behind me.  He came up level with me, and I showed him the map and the direction we were taking.  I was mighty keen to see this famous spot.  Stories of famous fights in that great salient were common talk amongst us, and had been for a long time.  The wonderful defence of Ypres against the hordes of Germans in the previous October had filled our lines of trenches with pride and superiority, but no wonderment.  Every one regarded Ypres as a strenuous spot, but every one secretly wanted to go there and see it for themselves.  I felt sure we were now bound for there, or anyway, somewhere not far off.  We tramped along in the growing darkness, up the winding dusty road to Locre.  When we arrived there it was quite dark.  The battalion marched right up into the sort of village square near the church and halted.  It was late now, and apparently not necessary for us to proceed further that night.  We got orders to get billets for our men.  Locre is not a large place, and fitting a whole battalion in is none too easy an undertaking.  I was standing about a hundred yards down the road leading from the church, deciding what to do, when I got orders to billet my men in the church.  I marched the section into a field, got my sergeant, and went to see what could be done in the church.  It was a queer sight, this church; a company of ours had had orders to billet there too, and when I got there the men were already taking off their equipment and making themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, in the main body of the church.  The French clergy had for some time granted permission for billeting there; I found this out the next morning, when I saw a party of nuns cleaning it up as much as possible after we had left it.  The only part I could see where I could find a rest for my men was the part where the choir sits.  I decided on this for our use, and told the sergeant to get the men along, and move the chairs away so as to get a large enough space for them to lie down in and rest.

It was a weird scene, that night in the church.  Imagine a very lofty building, and the only light in the place coming from various bits of candles stuck about here and there on the backs of the chairs.  All was dark and drear, if you like:  a fitting setting for our entry into the Ypres salient.  When I had fixed up my section all right, I left the church and went to look about for the place I was supposed to sleep in.  It turned out to be a room at the