follow a narrow causeway,
constructed by our engineers. While we continually passed and repassed
through the place, we never had any troops actually billeted there, as
it was within easy range of the German guns and was still occupied by
the native population.

About the time of the St. Eloi affair, however, one of our Brigade
Headquarters had been located in a group of buildings at the edge of
the town, perfectly camouflaged and concealed from aircraft
observation. It had long been suspected that there were spies among
the people of this place and that they had effective means of
communicating with the enemy, so when Fritz turned his guns on that
headquarters, no one was very much surprised, but a determined effort
was made to discover the guilty parties. Just what means were used I
do not know, but it was learned that several of the prominent
citizens, including the mayor or burgomaster, were in on it and they
were summarily dealt with.

Following this, German airmen dropped notices into the town, warning
all the civilians to get out as they were going to raze it to the
ground. Not many would have gone, however, had not our authorities
ordered the evacuation. As soon as the people had moved out, our
troops proceeded to prepare the buildings for use as billets,
reinforcing lower rooms and cellars with iron beams and protecting
them with sand-bags. This was the work with which our battalion, and
others, had been occupied and was just about completed when, true to
their word, the Heinies started in, systematically, to write "finis"
for Dickebusch. The church had already been pretty well shot up, as
well as the surrounding graveyard where many of the tombs and
monuments were smashed and the dead thrown from their graves. This
blowing up of the dead seems to be a favorite pastime with the gentle
Hun. They, the Germans, were now engaged in the demolition of the
buildings along the principal streets and were doing it in a very
thorough manner. We had here many demonstrations of a matter about
which I have been questioned, times without number, by both military
men and civilians, and that is, "What is the effective radius of a
shell of a certain caliber?" It is one of the things which our
theorists in general, and artillerymen in particular, delight in. Many
hours of learned discourse have been devoted to proving,
theoretically, that an area of a given size can be made impassable by
dropping a certain number of shells on i