t was a very beautiful place situated in lovely grounds. A
card on a door upstairs bore the inscription, "His Excellency General,"
and then followed a German name. The place had been the headquarters
of some enemy corps or division on the previous day. At the back of
the Chateau was a very strong concrete dugout divided off into rooms,
which were soon filled by our officers and men. All that night the
wounded were being brought to the Chateau, and German prisoners also
found their way there. Nobody was paying much attention to the latter,
and, thinking it was unwise to let them wander about, and perhaps go
back to their lines with information about our location, with (p. 285)
the permission of the C.O. of the ambulance, who was up to his eyes in
work, I had them all put into one large room over which I placed a
guard. They were sent back to the corps cage in the morning. The
Germans evidently expected that we would use the Chateau because they
dropped some heavy shells in the garden during the night, and we had
to get the wounded down in to the cellars in quick time.

I had about three hours sleep that night, and in the morning I
determined to follow up our men of the 1st Brigade who had now
established themselves at a village ahead of us called Rouvroy. As I
was starting off, a signaller came up to me and told me he had
captured a stray horse with a saddle on it and that he would lend it
to me to take me to my destination. I mounted the animal and went down
the avenue in great pride and comfort, but after I got into the road a
man came up and stopped me and told me, to my horror, that I was
riding his horse which he had lost the night before. It requires great
strength of mind and self-mastery to give up a mount to a pedestrian
when you are once in the saddle. But the war had not entirely
extinguished the light of conscience in my soul, so, tired as I was, I
dismounted and gave up the steed. But as I saw the man ride back to
the Chateau I began to wonder within myself whether he was the real
owner or not. One thief does not like to be out-witted by another.
However, there was nothing to do now but to go straight ahead. The
road before me led directly to Rouvroy. Some German planes were
hovering overhead, and in the fields to my left our artillery were
going into action. As shells were dropping on the road I took a short
cut over the fields. Here I found some of our machine-gunners, and the
body of a poor fellow wh