hat very ground my son and
I had ridden together, and within a stone's throw from it two years
before we had said good-bye to one another for the last time.

Our Division had now come out of the line and were hurrying north. On
August 26th Lyons and I started off in the car, and after a tedious
and dusty journey, enlivened by several break-downs, arrived (p. 290)
in Arras very late at night and found a billet with the Engineers in
the Place de la Croix. Once more our men were scattered about the old
city and its environs as if we had never left it. Our Battle Headquarters
were in the forward area and rear Headquarters in a large house in Rue
du Pasteur. It was a picturesque abode. The building itself was modern,
but it was erected on what had been an old Augustinian Monastery of
the 11th century. Underneath the house there was a large vaulted hall
with pillars in it which reminded one of the cloisters of Westminster
Abbey. It was below the level of the ground and was lit by narrow
windows opening on the street. It was a most interesting place and had
been decorated with heraldic designs painted on canvas shields by a
British Division that had once made its headquarters there. We used
the hall as our mess and from it passages led to several vault-like
chambers and to cellars at the back, one of which was my bedroom. A
flight of steps led down to stone chambers below these and then down a
long sloping passage to a broken wall which barred the entrance into
the mysterious caves beneath the city. The exhalations which came up
to my bedroom from these subterranean passages were not as fresh or
wholesome as one could have wished, but, as it was a choice between
foul air and running the chance of being shelled, I naturally chose
the former.

We moved into this billet in the evening, and early the following
morning I was lying awake, thinking of all the strange places I had
lived in during the war, when close by I heard a fearful crash. I
waited for a moment, and then, hearing the sound of voices calling for
help, I rushed up in my pyjamas and found that a huge shell had struck
a house three doors away, crushing it in and killing and wounding some
of our Headquarters staff. Though Arras was then continually being
shelled, some of the inhabitants remained. Opposite our house was a
convent, and in cellars below the ground several nuns lived all
through the war. They absolutely refused to leave their home in spite
of the f