It was at these early morning breakfast parties in the Prison that the grim significance of the word “Gate” impressed itself upon me.  “Which gate did you come in at?” was a very common question which one officer would ask another on their return from work in the trenches.  “I came in by the Dixmude Gate,” or “I came in by the Menin Gate,” would be the reply.  And some would say that they had avoided “gates” altogether and threaded their way across the open.  These gates were places of evil omen.  The enemy had the exact range of them, and knew when working parties would be likely to be passing them.  And upon no spot was conferred a greater legacy of awe than upon the Menin Gate.  It was always one of the most terrible spots in Ypres.  People were killed there every day.  To go past the Menin Gate was considered to be asking for it.  So a terror of the Menin Gate was bred in me before I had ever seen the gruesome, stinking spot.  And the Menin Gate had taken its toll on Messines Night.

My letter continues:  “At 6 I went to bed again.  Just as I was doing so, gas shells began to burst once more, but we did not smell much; the wind could not have been very favourable to the enemy.  I soon got to sleep again.  We all did.  In my room, apart from myself, there are Verity, Priestley, and Barker.  They are in different companies from me.

“We got up at midday to-day.  Things are very much quieter; there are only, on an average, about one or two bangs per minute; and those are generally caused by our guns firing shells on the enemy.  Very few German shells have burst here to-day since the terrible bombardment in the early hours of the morning.  We lost no officers last night, but a few non-commissioned officers and men were killed and wounded while returning last night.  An official message has come through that all our objectives were captured this morning.”

It was on this afternoon that Major Brighten gathered all officers together for a conference in Headquarters Mess, and read out to us, in great exultation, a “secret” Special Order of the Day by Sir Douglas Haig dated, if I remember rightly, the day before Messines.  I wish I had a copy of that Order in my hands now in order that I might quote it verbatim here.  In the course of his Order I remember the Field-Marshal declared that another such blow as those which we had inflicted upon the enemy on the Somme, on the Anare, and at Arras would win the war!  Major Brighten, with his eternal optimism, honestly believed it; and so did everybody else.  Everybody was effervescing with excitement about Plumer’s brilliant victory at Messines.  I hold now with Mr. John Buchan, and I realized then, that “Sir Herbert Plumer had achieved what deserves to be regarded as in its own fashion a tactical masterpiece”; but, as I have already pointed out, I took a much more telescopic view of the World War than that.  So, while sharing the satisfaction of the others in the Messines success,