I could understand it, of course, but “here” seemed so pitifully poor a place—­a wet and cold and dirty coach house, open to all the winds that blew; before it a courtyard stabling army horses that stood to the fetlocks in mud.  For food they had what the boy of twenty-two or other cooks like him were preparing over tiny fires built against brick walls.  But they were alive, and there were letters from home, and before very long they expected to drive the Germans back in one of those glorious charges so dear to the French heart.  They were here, and they were content.

More sheds, more small fires, more paring of potatoes and onions and simmering of stews.  The meal of the day was in preparation and its odours were savoury.  In one shed I photographed the cook, paring potatoes with a knife that looked as though it belonged on the end of a bayonet.  And here I was lined up by the fire and the cook—­and the knife—­and my picture taken.  It has not yet reached me.  Perhaps it went by way of England, and was deleted by the censor as showing munitions of war!

From Elverdingue the road led north and west, following the curves of the trenches.  We went through Woesten, where on the day before a dramatic incident had taken place.  Although the town was close to the battlefield and its church in plain view from the German lines, it had escaped bombardment.  But one Sunday morning a shot was fired.  The shell went through the roof of the church just above the altar, fell and exploded, killing the priest as he knelt.  The hole in the roof of the building bore mute evidence to this tragedy.  It was a small hole, for the shell exploded inside the building.  When I saw it a half dozen planks had been nailed over it to keep out the rain.

There were trees outside Woesten, more trees than I had been accustomed to nearer the sea.  Here and there a troop of cavalry horses was corralled in a grove; shaggy horses, not so large as the English ones.  They were confined by the simple expedient of stretching a rope from tree to tree in a large circle.

“French horses,” I said, “always look to me so small and light compared with English horses.”

Then a horse moved about, and on its shaggy flank showed plainly the mark of a Western branding iron!  They were American cow ponies from the plains.

“There are more than a hundred thousand American horses here,” observed the Lieutenant.  “They are very good horses.”

Later on I stopped to stroke the soft nose of a black horse as it stood trembling near a battery of heavy guns that was firing steadily.  It was American too.  On its flank there was a Western brand.  I gave it an additional caress, and talked a little American into one of its nervous, silky ears.  We were both far from home, a trifle bewildered, a bit uneasy and frightened.

And now it was the battlefield—­the flat, muddy plain of Ypres.  On the right bodies of men, sheltered by intervening groves and hedges, moved about.  Dispatch riders on motor cycles flew along the roads, and over the roof of a deserted farmhouse an observation balloon swung in the wind.  Beyond the hedges and the grove lay the trenches, and beyond them again German batteries were growling.  Their shells, however, were not bursting anywhere near us.