rk-chops with onions and potatoes. It was grand. We
washed them down with coffee, and went back to duty. For the remainder
of that day and for the whole of the night there was no rest for us.

At dawn the Division marched in column of route north-east towards the
sound of the guns.

Half of us at a time slipped away and fed in stinking taverns--but the
food was good.

I cannot remember a hotter day, and we were marching through a
thickly-populated mining district--the villages were uncomfortably like
those round Dour. The people were enthusiastic and generous with their
fruit and with their chocolate. It was very tiring work, because we were
compelled to ride with the Staff, for first one of us was needed and
then another to take messages up and down the column or across country
to brigades and divisions that were advancing along roads parallel to
ours. The old Division was making barely one mile an hour. The road was
blocked by French transport coming in the opposite direction, by 'buses
drawn up at the side of the road, and by cavalry that, trekking from the
Aisne, crossed our front continuously to take up their position away on
the left.

At last, about three o'clock in the afternoon, we reached the outskirts
of Bethune. The sound of the guns was very near, and to the east of the
town we could see an aeroplane haloed in bursting shrapnel.

The Staff took refuge first in an unsavoury field and afterwards in a
little house. Despatch after despatch until evening--and then, ordered
to remain behind to direct others, and cheered by the sight of our most
revered and most short-sighted staff-officer walking straight over a
little bridge into a deep, muddy, and stinking ditch, I took refuge in
the kitchen and experienced the discreeter pleasures of "the Force." The
handmaidens brought coffee, and brushed me and washed me and talked to
me. I was sorry when the time came for me to resume my beat, or rather
to ride with Cecil after the Division.

We passed some Turcos, happy-looking children but ill companions in a
hostile country, and some Spahis with flowing burnous, who looked
ridiculously out of place, and then, after a long search--it was dark on
the road and very cold--we found the Division.

I dined off a maconochie, and was wondering whether I dare lie down to
sleep, when I was called out to take a message to and remain at the 13th
Brigade. It was a bad night. Never was a man so cold in his life, and
the brigade