fles.

Transport was drawn up well under cover of the wall and troops were
marching in single file as near to the transport as possible. Two horses
were being led down the middle of the street. Just before they reached
me the nose of one of the horses suddenly was gashed and a stream of
blood poured out. Just a ricochet, and it decided me. Despatch riders
have to take care of themselves when H.Q. are eight miles away by road
and there is no wire. I put my motor-cycle under cover and walked the
remaining 200 yards.

Coming back I heard some shouting, a momentary silence, then a flare of
the finest blasphemy. I turned the bend to see an officer holding his
severed wrist and cursing. He was one of those dashing fellows. He had
ridden alongside the transport swearing at the men to get a move on. He
had held up his arm to give the signal when a ricochet took his hand off
cleanly. His men said not a word,--sat with an air of calm disapproval
like Flemish oxen.

It was one in the morning and dark on the road when I took my next
despatch to St Marguerite. Just out of Bucy I passed Moulders, who
shouted, "Ware wire and horses." Since last I had seen it the village
had been unmercifully shelled. Where the transport had been drawn up
there were shattered waggons. Strewn over the road were dead horses, of
all carcasses the most ludicrously pitiful, and wound in and out of
them, a witches' web, crawled the wire from the splintered telegraph
posts. There was not a sound in the village except the gentle thump of
my engine. I was forced to pull up, that I might more clearly see my
way between two horses. My engine silent, I could only hear a little
whisper from the house opposite and a dripping that I did not care to
understand. Farther on a house had fallen half across the road. I
scarcely dared to start my engine again in the silence of this desolate
destruction. Then I could not, because the dripping was my petrol and
not the gore of some slaughtered animal. A flooded carburettor is a
nuisance in an unsavoury village.

At the eastern end of St Marguerite the road turns sharply south. This
is "Hell's Own Corner." From it there is a full and open view of the
Chivres valley, and conversely those in the Chivres valley can see the
corner very clearly. When we were acting on the offensive, a section of
4.5 in. howitzers were put into position just at the side of the road by
the corner. This the Germans may have discovered, or perhaps