The C.O. walked on to the platform hurriedly, and in a minute or two I was off.  It was lucky that the road was covered with unholy grease, that the light was bad and there was transport on the road—­for it is not good for a despatch rider to think too much of what is before him.  My instructions were to report to the general and make myself useful.  I was also cheerfully informed that the H.Q. of the 15th were under a robust shell-fire.  Little parties of sad-looking wounded that I passed, the noise of the guns, and the evil dusk heartened me.

I rode into Festubert, which was full of noise, and, very hastily dismounting, put my motor-cycle under the cover of an arch and reported to the general.  He was sitting at a table in the stuffy room of a particularly dirty tavern.  At the far end a fat and frightened woman was crooning to her child.  Beside her sat a wrinkled, leathery old man with bandaged head.  He had wandered into the street, and he had been cut about by shrapnel.  The few wits he had ever possessed were gone, and he gave every few seconds little croaks of hate.  Three telephone operators were working with strained faces at their highest speed.  The windows had been smashed by shrapnel, and bits of glass and things crunched under foot.  The room was full of noises—­the crackle of the telephones, the crooning of the woman, the croak of the wounded old man, the clear and incisive tones of the general and his brigade-major, the rattle of not too distant rifles, the booming of guns and occasionally the terrific, overwhelming crash of a shell bursting in the village.

I was given a glass of wine.  Cadell, the Brigade Signal Officer, and the Veterinary Officer, came up to me and talked cheerfully in whispered tones about our friends.

There was the sharp cry of shrapnel in the street and a sudden rattle against the whole house.  The woman and child fled somewhere through a door, followed feebly by the old man.  The brigade-major persuaded the general to work in some less unhealthy place.  The telephone operators moved.  A moment’s delay as the general endeavoured to persuade the brigade-major to go first, and we found ourselves under a stalwart arch that led into the courtyard of the tavern.  We lit pipes and cigarettes.  The crashes of bursting shells grew more frequent, and the general remarked in a dry and injured tone—­

“Their usual little evening shoot before putting up the shutters, I suppose.”

But first the Germans “searched” the village.  Now to search a village means to start at one end of the village and place shells at discreet intervals until the other end of the village is reached.  It is an unpleasant process for those in the middle of the village, even though they be standing, as we were, in comparatively good shelter.

We heard the Germans start at the other end of the village street.  The crashes came nearer and nearer, until a shell burst with a scream and a thunderous roar just on our right.  We puffed away at our cigarettes for a second, and a certain despatch rider wished he were anywhere but in the cursed village of Festubert by Bethune.  There was another scream and overwhelming relief.  The next shell burst three houses away on our left.  I knocked my pipe out and filled another.