a field, his staff-captain with him. The ground
sloped away to a wooded valley in which two or three batteries,
carefully concealed, were blazing away. To the north shrapnel was
bursting over Kemmel. In front the Messines ridge was almost hidden with
the smoke of our shells. I felt that each point of interest ought to
have been labelled in Mr Frederic Villiers' handwriting--"_German
shrapnel bursting over Kemmel--our guns--this is a dead horse_."

I first saw Ypres on the 6th November. I was sent off with a bundle of
routine matter to the 1st Corps, then at Brielen, a couple of miles N.W.
of Ypres. It was a nightmare ride. The road was _pave_ in the
centre--villainous _pave_. At the side of it were glutinous morasses
about six feet in width, and sixteen inches deep. I started off with
two 2nd Corps motor-cyclists. There was an almost continuous line of
transport on the road--motor-lorries that did not dare deviate an inch
from the centre of the road for fear of slipping into the mire, motor
ambulances, every kind of transport, and some infantry battalions. After
following a column of motor-lorries a couple of miles--we stuck twice in
trying to get past the rearmost lorry--we tried the road by Dranoutre
and Locre. But these country lanes were worse of surface than the main
road--greasy _pave_ is better that greasy rocks--and they were filled
with odd detachments of French artillery. The two 2nd Corps
motor-cyclists turned back. I crawled on at the risk of smashing my
motor-cycle and myself, now skidding perilously between waggons, now
clogging up, now taking to the fields, now driving frightened
pedestrians off what the Belgians alone would call a footpath. I skidded
into a subaltern, and each of us turned to curse, when--it was Gibson, a
junior "Greats" don at Balliol, and the finest of fellows.

Beyond Dickebusch French artillery were in action on the road. The
houses just outside Ypres had been pelted with shrapnel but not
destroyed. Just by the station, which had not then been badly knocked
about, I learnt where to go. Ypres was the first half-evacuated town I
had entered. It was like motor-cycling into a village from Oxford very
early on a Sunday morning. Half an hour later I saw the towers of the
city rising above a bank of mist which had begun to settle on the
ground: then out rose great clouds of black smoke.

I came back by Poperinghe to avoid the grease and crowding of the direct
road, and there being no hur