“At 11 a.m.  I set off up the road with another officer to the city where my unit is stationed.  We got a lift in a motor as far as a town half-way.  This town (Vlamertinghe) was almost entirely in ruins.  There has been an ancient church there, but only the front of the tower and all the crucifixes remain.  Shells were bursting all about.  We sat down on a fence and waited for another lift.  It was most exciting.  I have not got the ‘wind up’ yet; I am more interested than anything else.  I contemplated a famous hill on my right.  Then we got on another motor.  This ride was most exciting, the excitement consisting in whether we could reach the city without being blown to pieces by the shells which were exploding to front of us, to right of us, to rear of us, and to left of us!  The road was cut up by shells which had exploded on it, and trees were felled across it.  We jogged a good deal riding over this debris.  We saw one of our batteries on the left of the road which had been smashed by a German shell.  A good many of the transport horses had been killed on the road last night, but the bodies had been removed by now.  We got out of the car just outside the city and walked into it.  What struggles have taken place here!  One could hardly realize that in pre-war days this had been a great and flourishing city.  Just a few buildings remain standing, and those all in ruins; debris everywhere, shells constantly exploding everywhere.  It is reckoned that the rate of casualties in this city just now is a thousand a week; military, of course—­there are no civilians here; it is a battlefield where battles have been fought, where strafing is going on now, and around which a great battle is about to be fought.  One battalion in our brigade went over the top on a raid last night.  Our guns are even now conducting the preliminary bombardment along the line which precedes a great offensive.  And the Germans are giving it us back too!  My companion was very anxious that we should reach the Prison without personally encountering any shells.  He told me that the corner round which we were passing was a windy one!  But we got inside the Prison safe and sound, and here I now am writing this while the shells are flying and our guns stationed in the city are speaking.  The top of this building is in ruins as shells are constantly hitting it, but we are down below, and we have wire-netting to catch the falling debris.

“I was received by a young Major and the Adjutant, Lieutenant Andrews.  I had lunch with them and the other officers in the (Headquarters) mess-room.”

There let us pause for a moment.  There are scenes in one’s life, pleasant and otherwise, which one can never forget, which ever rest vividly in the eye of the mind.  There were many such scenes during my experiences in France and Belgium; but none do I recollect more clearly, and few with more satisfaction, than this my first meal with the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers.  Never was a subaltern given a more