that night,
when there was a terrific bang just outside the chateau--nearer than
ever before. We looked at each other, and would, I verily believe,
have settled down again to our work, so accustomed were we to shells
of all sorts, had not Naylor, who had joined us two days before as
temporary signal officer (_vice_ Cadell, gone sick with light typhoid
at Hille eighteen days before), jumped up and run outside in order to
see where it had gone. Being Divisional signal officer, he had not,
perhaps, had quite so much experience of shells as we had, and he
wanted to get into closer touch. The example was infectious, and we
also strolled out to see where the shell had fallen. Hardly had we got
outside into the passage, and halfway up the basement steps into the
fresh air, when there was a roar and an appalling crash which shook
the building. The concussion made me stagger, and blew my cap off. St
Andre's hat fizzed away into the bushes, and, surrounded by a cloud of
red dust and stones and chips of balustrades and hunks of wood and
branches, we held on to anything we could. No damage to ourselves; but
a glance down the passage showed us that the shell, or most of it, had
exploded in or just outside the kitchen, and blown that chamber, as
well as the housekeeper's room, which we had just left, into absolute
smithereens.

No time to look into further details; a hurried issue of orders, and
we legged it for all we were worth across the open and into our
funk-hole in the shrubbery 300 yards off, whilst the signal section
and servants and orderlies made a bolt for the stables in the opposite
direction.

But the Germans seem to have been satisfied with this little
exhibition of "hate," and bombarded us no more--except casually, with
shrapnel, as usual. We crept back to the chateau at intervals during
the morning, and removed various possessions and chairs and tables to
our dug-out, which was not a very luxurious abode, though dry and
fairly deep. Poor Conway, Weatherby's servant, whom he had left
behind, was the only casualty; his dead body was found, with both legs
broken and an arm off, blown down a cellar passage at the back. The
next most serious casualty was Moulton-Barrett's new pair of breeches,
arrived that morning from England, and driven full of holes like a
sugar-sifter. Our late room was a mass of wreckage--half the outer
wall and most of the inner one blown down, tables and chairs and
things overturned and broken,