Our trouble was to know where to go.  The righting on the previous night had covered a wide area, but a good many of the wounded had been brought back.  Where the wounded still lay the enemy’s shell-fire was so heavy that the Belgian ambulances could get nowhere near.  Lieutenant de Broqueville was earnestly requested not to lead his little column into unnecessary risks, especially as it was difficult to know the exact position of the enemy until reports came in from the field officers.

It was astonishing—­as it is always in war—­to find how soldiers quite near to the front are in utter ignorance of the course of a great battle.  Many of the officers and men with whom we talked could not tell us where the allied forces were, nor where the enemy was in position, nor whether the heavy fighting during the last day and night had been to the advantage of the Allies or the Germans.  They believed, but were not sure, that the enemy had been driven back many kilometres between Nieuport and Dixmude.

At last, after many discussions and many halts, we received our orders.  We were asked to get into the town of Dixmude, where there were many wounded.

It was about sixteen kilometres away from Furnes, and about half that distance from where we had halted for lunch.  Not very far away, it will be seen, yet, as we went along the road, nearer to the sound of great guns which for the last hour or two had been firing incessantly again, we passed many women and children.  It had only just occurred to them that death was round the corner, and that there was no more security in those little stone or plaster houses of theirs, which in time of peace had been safe homes against all the evils of life.  It had come to their knowledge, very slowly, that they were of no more protection than tissue paper under a rain of lead.  So they were now leaving for a place at longer range.  Poor old grandmothers in black bonnets and skirts trudged under the lines of poplars, with younger women who clasped their babes tight in one hand while with the other they carried heavy bundles of household goods.  They did not walk very fast.  They did not seem very much afraid.  They had a kind of patient misery in their look.  Along the road came some more German prisoners, marching rapidly between mounted guards.  Many of them were wounded, and all of them had a wild, famished, terror-stricken look.  I caught the savage glare of their eyes as they stared into my car.  There was something beast-like and terrible in their gaze like that of hunted animals caught in a trap.

At a turn in the road the battle lay before us, and we were in the zone of fire.  Away across the fields was a line of villages, with the town of Dixmude a little to the right of us, perhaps two kilometres away.  From each little town smoke was rising in separate columns, which met at the top in a great pall of smoke, as a heavy black cloud cresting above the light on the horizon line.  At every moment this blackness was brightened by puffs of electric blue, extraordinarily vivid, as shells burst in the air.  Then the colour gradually faded out, and the smoke darkened and became part of the pall.  From the mass of houses in each town came jabs of flame, following the explosions which sounded with terrific, thudding shocks.