rve, and
the Bedfords and Cheshires on their way back to Ypres.

Then, with a sigh of some thankfulness apiece, we stumbled back in the
darkness to the chateau, where we waited to collect the remains of the
Signal Section and staff, and then moved off, mounted this time, down
the Menin-Ypres road.

It was freezing very hard--as I think I remarked before--and the road
was frightfully slippery. Trotting was almost out of the question, but
I tried it on Squeaky for a few yards, on a dry broken bit. She pulled
back on to the slippery part, slid up, and sat down heavily, whilst I
fell gracefully off on to my shoulder. And she repeated the
performance the other side of the town. Ypres, in the bright
starlight, was still quite impressive, and the Cloth Hall was still
almost intact. But there were many shell-holes about, and some of the
houses were still smouldering. The town happened to be respited from
shells for the actual moment, but I believe that the very next day a
heavy bombardment began again, and the Cloth Hall was destroyed till
hardly the skeleton thereof was left.

_Nov. 21st._

We were due to billet in Locre, and there we arrived at about 7 A.M.
It was frightfully cold, but, after we had seen the two battalions
billeted, the military policeman who had been told to turn up and show
us to our billets was nowhere to be found, so we wandered on as far
as the Convent, staggering and slipping on the snowy ice and blowing
on our fingers as we went. The thermometer must have shown ten degrees
of frost or more, but I only know that I was very glad to reach our
little house at last (having passed it already once half a mile
before) and get in between the sheets of an ancient but respectably
clean bed, covered by all the mackintoshes, blankets, and rugs I could
get hold of.

The Cheshires were billeted on the Mont Rouge close by, and the
Bedfords near us, at the corner of the Westoutre road. They had all
struggled over the fourteen miles or so that divided them from their
trenches, but having arrived and their feet having swollen terribly
during the long march, any number of them could not get their boots on
again, and they went to hospital by twenties and thirties, hobbling
along the road with their feet tied up in rags or socks, for they were
deformed with rheumatism and swollen joints,[23] and would not fit any
boot. The Cheshires, as I expected, were much the worse of the two
battalions, for their trenches had b