Both pilot and observer were dead.  They had made a gallant fight, and were buried the same evening, with all honour, in the little cemetery, alongside many who had once been their foes, but were now peacefully neutral.

IV

The housing question in Belgium confronts us with several novel problems.  It is not so easy to billet troops here, especially in the Salient, as in France.  Some of us live in huts, others in tents, others in dug-outs.  Others, more fortunate, are loaded on to a fleet of motor-buses and whisked off to more civilised dwellings many miles away.  These buses once plied for hire upon the streets of London.  Each bus is in charge of the identical pair of cross-talk comedians who controlled its destinies in more peaceful days.  Strangely attired in khaki and sheepskin, they salute officers with cheerful bonhomie, and bellow to one another throughout the journey the simple and primitive jests of their previous incarnation, to the huge delight of their fares.

The destination-boards and advertisements are no more, for the buses are painted a neutral green all over; but the conductor is always ready and willing to tell you what his previous route was.

“That Daimler behind you, sir,” he informs you, “is one of the Number Nineteens.  Set you down at the top of Sloane Street many a time, I’ll be bound.  Ernie”—­this to the driver, along the side of the bus—­“you oughter have slowed down when thet copper waved his little flag:  he wasn’t pleased with yer, ole son!” (The “copper” is a military mounted policeman, controlling the traffic of a little town which lies on our way to the trenches.) “This is a Number Eight, sir.  No, that dent in the staircase wasn’t done by no shell.  The ole girl got that through a skid up against a lamp-post, one wet Saturday night in the Vauxhall Bridge Road.  Dangerous place, London!”

We rattle through a brave little town, which is “carrying on” in the face of paralysed trade and periodical shelling.  Soldiers abound.  All are muddy, but some are muddier than others.  The latter are going up to the trenches, the former are coming back.  Upon the walls, here and there, we notice a gay poster advertising an entertainment organised by certain Divisional troops, which is to be given nightly throughout the week.  At the foot of the bill is printed in large capitals, A HOOGE success!  We should like to send a copy of that plucky document to Brother Boche.  He would not understand it, but it would annoy him greatly.

Now we leave the town behind, and quicken up along the open road—­an interminable ribbon of pave, absolutely straight, and bordered upon either side by what was once macadam, but is now a quagmire a foot deep.  Occasionally there is a warning cry of “Wire!” and the outside fares hurriedly bow from the waist, in order to avoid having their throats cut by a telephone wire—­“Gunners for a dollar!” surmises a strangled voice—­tightly stretched across the road between two poplars.  Occasionally, too, that indefatigable humorist, Ernie, directs his course beneath some low-spreading branches, through which the upper part of the bus crashes remorselessly, while the passengers, lying sardine-wise upon the roof uplift their voices in profane and bloodthirsty chorus.