ike travelers who had come to some capital
of an old and buried civilization, staring with awe and uncanny fear at
this burial-place of ancient splendor, with broken traces of peoples who
once had lived here in security. I looked up at the blue sky above those
white ruins, and had an idea that death hovered there like a hawk ready
to pounce. Even as one of us (not I) spoke the thought, the signal came.
It was a humming drone high up in the sky.

"Look out!" said the lanky man. "Germans!"

It was certain that two birds hovering over the Grande Place were
hostile things, because suddenly white puffballs burst all round them,
as the shrapnel of our own guns scattered about them. But they flew
round steadily in a half-circle until they were poised above our heads.

It was time to seek cover, which was not easy to find just there, where
masses of stonework were piled high. At any moment things might drop. I
ducked my head behind a curtain of bricks as I heard a shrill "coo-ee!"
from a shell. It burst close with a scatter, and a tin cup was flung
against a bit of wall close to where the lanky man sat in a shell-hole.
He picked it up and said, "Queer!" and then smelled it, and said
"Queer!" again. It was not an ordinary bomb. It had held some poisonous
liquid from a German chemist's shop. Other bombs were dropping round
as the two hostile airmen circled overhead, untouched still by the
following shell-bursts. Then they passed toward their own lines, and my
friend in the shell-hole called to me and said, "Let's be going."

It was time to go.

When we reached the edge of the town our guns away back started
shelling, and we knew the Germans would answer. So we sat in a field
nearby to watch the bombardment. The air moved with the rushing waves
which tracked the carry of each shell from our batteries, and over Ypres
came the high singsong of the enemies' answering voice.

As the dusk fell there was a movement out from Vlamertinghe, a movement
of transport wagons and marching men. They were going up in the darkness
through Ypres--rations and reliefs. They were the New Army men of the
West Riding.

"Carry on there," said a young officer at the head of his company.
Something in his eyes startled me. Was it fear, or an act of sacrifice?
I wondered if he would be killed that night. Men were killed most nights
on the way through Ypres, sometimes a few and sometimes many. One shell
killed thirty one night, and their bodies lay str