January 1st, 1915, found me in damp, sodden Flanders. I was one of the dozen remaining members of the original Royal Automobile Club Corps, which had joined the British Expeditionary Force in France before Mons and the great retreat on Paris.

I was attached, with my car, to the Headquarters Staff of the 1st Cavalry Division, Major-General H. de B. de Lisle, C.B., D.S.O., commanding. The Echelon A Divisional Staff Mess consisted of General de Lisle; Colonel "Sally" Home, 11th Hussars, G.S.O. 1; Major Percy Hambro, 15th Hussars, G.S.O. 2; Captain Cecil Howard, 16th Lancers, G.S.O. 3; Major Wilfred Jelf, R.H.A., Divisional Artillery Commander; Captain "Mouse" Tomkinson, "Royals," A.P.M.; Captain Hardress Lloyd, 4th Dragoon Guards, A.D.C.; Lieutenant "Pat" Armstrong, 10th Hussars, A.D.C., and myself.

We were housed in a chÂteau between Cassel and St. Omer. In the latter town General French and General Headquarters (G.H.Q.) were located.

The 1st Cavalry Division contained the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Brigades. The 1st Brigade, under Major-General Briggs, was composed of the 2nd Dragoons (Queen's Bays), 5th Dragoon Guards and 11th Hussars. Brigadier-General Mullens commanded the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, in which were the 4th Dragoon Guards, 9th Lancers and 18th Hussars.

These troops were billeted in Flemish farms and villages north of the road that led from Cassel to Bailleul.

Sir John French's army in the field at that time was composed of the 1st Army under General Sir Douglas Haig, and the 2nd Army under General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien. The corps units were as follows:—1st Corps, General C. C. Monro; 2nd Corps, General Sir Charles Fergusson; 3rd Corps, General Pulteney; 4th Corps, General Sir Henry Rawlinson; Cavalry Corps, General Allenby; Indian Corps, General Sir James Willcocks; Indian Cavalry Corps, General Rimington; and the Flying Corps under General Henderson. Of the new 5th Corps, which was to be under the command of General Sir Herbert Plumer, only the 27th Division was as yet "out," though the 28th Division was ready to embark.

Most of the news parcelled out to those who were "resting" in billets back of the line came from the London newspapers.

Typed sheets, dubbed "summaries of information," and issued by G.H.Q., were distributed daily, but were never valuable and rarely really informative.

The G.H.Q. information sheet of January 1st, 1915, read: "The Germans made an attack on the right of our line, south of Givenchy, yesterday evening, and captured an observation post. This post was retaken by a counter-attack early this morning, but later on was again captured by the enemy. The line has now been reorganized."

A friend in the 1st Army, which was covering the part of the line thus attacked, showed me the 1st Army summary of 7 p.m., January 1st, which added the following to the news on the situation: "All is quiet in front. Fighting on right of 1st Corps last night was not as serious as at first reported. Casualties in Scots Guards believed to be about five officers and fifty other ranks. Most of these casualties occurred owing to the regiment pushing on beyond the original trench, and attacking the enemy's position. This wet weather is entailing great hardship on the men, who are fully engaged repairing trenches, some of which have had to be abandoned owing to water. The Germans are reported to be no better off."

Such brief, dry, official summaries applied to most of the wet days of January, 1915. Trench warfare in winter has a very stoggy sameness about it.

A 3rd Corps advance in front of the Ploegsteert Wood resulted in several of our men being drowned while attacking, so deep was the water in the submerged shell-holes in the flooded area.

Discipline, the capacity to go forward in pursuance of an order, in spite of the fact that doing so seems utterly futile, is possessed by the British troops to a remarkable degree. Small operations, comparatively unimportant in scope and result, served to demonstrate daily the splendid spirit of the men under inconceivably trying conditions.

One trench at Givenchy was taken and retaken time after time, and the men ordered to capture the trench were ever found ready to "go up" in the same dashing way, though they knew to a man that the assault meant inevitable loss, and would more than likely be followed by a further enforced evacuation, by their own comrades, of the untenable position.

The Huns were well supplied with trench-mortars, bombs and hand-grenades, and used them with great effect. Our men had practically none of these indispensable attributes to trench warfare, or at least had so few of them that their use produced comparatively negligible results.

The Christmas truce between British and German units confronting each other in the trenches produced echoes for weeks. The order from General French stating clearly that "the Commander-in-Chief views with the greatest displeasure" such fraternizing with the enemy had produced a partial effect, but instances still occurred where the Huns took the initiative in the matter of peace overtures for short periods.

A visit to one part of our front line unearthed the following story: The opposing trenches were separated by a highway, across which, one morning, a German soldier shouted, "Let's have a truce for to-day. We don't want to kill you fellows. Why should we kill each other? We are to be relieved by the Prussians to-morrow night. You can kill them if you like. We don't care. We are Saxons."

The extraordinary proposal was taken in good part, and the truce kept for thirty-six hours. No men of either army left their trenches, but not a shot was fired from German or English trench at that point.

A few miles from the scene of this incident the men of the opposing armies became quite accustomed to calling across the intervening ground to their enemies. Each side, one day, boasted of the excellence of its food supply. A British Tommy declared his lunch ration included an incomparable tin of sardines. A German soldier shouted his disbelief that Tommy possessed any such delicacy. Thereupon an empty sardine tin on the point of a bayonet was raised above the British trench parapet in proof of Tommy's statement.

"That's a sardine tin," yelled a Hun derisively, "but there is no sardine in it, mein friend."

A few minutes passed, then a tin of sardines, unopened and temptingly whole and sound was thrown from the English trench towards the trench of the enemy. It fell short. Over his parapet vaulted a big German, who dashed at the tin with outstretched hand. As his fingers were closing over it, it jumped from his grasp. Again he stooped and reached for it. Again it leaped away. Tommy had attached a thin but stout line to his sardine tin, willing to prove his assertion, but with no idea of losing his luncheon.

Two or three times the big Hun grabbed wildly at the elusive prize, amid the shouts and laughter of the men of both armies, who cheered in unison as Hans was at last convinced of the futility of further effort and retired in confusion to his trench.

In the early hours of the New Year a trench full of Westphalians and a party from a section of our line held by the 4th Corps, fraternised to such an extent that visits were paid by each contingent to the "no-man's land" between the trenches. When the British soldiers returned to their trench, they found a man curled up in the bottom of it. Investigation showed him to be a German soldier.

"'Ere, git out o' this," said Tommy indignantly. "You're bloomin' well in the wrong 'ouse."

"No," said the Hun decidedly, "me prisoner, prisoner!"

"Not you," was the indignant reply. "Play the gime, you silly old 'Un, an' 'ook it."

But such was not the intention of the Saxon lad. With hands in air to indicate his abject surrender, he insisted he was a prisoner and refused to budge.

Nonplussed, the Tommies shouted over to the Germans: "'Ere's one o' your chaps 'ere as won't go 'ome, the silly beggar. 'E's lorst 'is way, poor chap, an' don't know where 'e are."

"Send him back to us, please," was the prompt request from the Deutschers.

But not a move would the Hun make, until at last half a dozen stout Tommies hoisted him over the parapet with the butts of their rifles. Still he tarried. With an oath a burly British corporal called two of his comrades. They leaped out of the trench, grabbed the hesitating Hun, and marched him at quick time to his own lines. There they turned him over to his officer, presented arms in salute, wheeled and marched gravely back to their own trench.

"What did the German bloke say when you chucked the chap to him?" was asked the corporal.

"Thynks," laconically replied that worthy, "an' no more, except to sye, 'We'll fix the rotter.' An' so they bloomin' well should—desertin' durin' a bally troose that wye—the dirty dog."

As the 1st Cavalry Division was "resting," visits to points of interest were the order of the day. On Monday, January 4th, General de Lisle, Captain Hardress Lloyd, and I ran, vi quaint old Bergues and Dunkirk, to Furnes, where King Albert of the Belgians had his Headquarters.

Belgian sentries were plentiful after Dunkirk. They frequently stopped us, but generally the word "Anglais" was a sufficient passport. Now and again Lloyd produced a British pass, at which the Belgians would invariably look blandly, if uncomprehendingly, then salute and urbanely wave us on our way. Any sort of pass would have served with ninety-nine out of a hundred such sentries.

The coast district in Belgium was not interesting in itself. Roadways ran between sluggish, morbid-looking canals and flat, dispirited fields—a sad, soggy, flabby land, in very truth.

Furnes was a picturesque relief. The architectural beauties of the Hotel de Ville and one or two other buildings in its fine old square were undeniable. Not long after our visit Furnes was viciously shelled by the Huns. Later it was practically devastated by big howitzer shells. Three or four days before our visit to the town a Black Maria had landed in a busy spot near the square one noontide, killing ten people and wounding a dozen others.

Nieuport, not far away, was under a heavy bombardment when we arrived in Furnes. Three days before sixty French soldiers had been killed in one day in Nieuport, which had proved so great a death-trap that all troops had been moved to dug-outs outside the town.

I had a chat with one of King Albert's Staff whom I had previously met in London. He was a very outspoken critic of the Belgian officers, and of the policy that had resulted in the Belgian evacuation of Antwerp before such a dÉbÂcle was absolutely necessary.

We had lunch in Furnes with Colonel Tom Bridges. I had seen much of Bridges during the first months of the War, when he was attached to the 4th Dragoon Guards as a major. He led a charge at Tour de Paissy, on the Aisne, which saved the British line. Promoted to the rank of Colonel, he was given command of the 4th Hussars. A very few days afterwards, while on a night march, he was sent for by General Sir John French. Arriving at G.H.Q., Bridges, who had been the British Military AttachÉ in Belgium prior to the War and knew the Belgian Army well, was given certain instructions, placed in a Rolls-Royce car, and at once started for Antwerp. He arrived late at night, after a continuous run of over 600 kilometres, and saw King Albert, who at once convened a Council of War. Bridges then jumped into the work at hand without a moment's delay.

Tom Bridges arrived in Antwerp on November 3rd. The city was evacuated by the Belgians on November 8th.

Having heard so much of the prominent part Bridges had played in the affairs of the Belgians, I looked forward with all the more anticipation to again meeting him.

Major Prince Alexander of Teck, attached to Colonel Bridges' mission, and Mrs. Bridges, who had recently been at work in the Duchess of Sutherland's hospital at Dunkirk, were at luncheon.

Colonel Bridges talked of King Albert. "The King gives to a stranger the impression that he comes to a decision slowly. I have heard men, who have met him, say they thought him extremely deliberate, but all recognise his solid foundation of determination. But for that rock on which the King's stern determination is set, there would be but little Belgian Army left to-day. To King Albert personally much more is due than is likely ever to be known."

The more I saw of the Belgian Army along the Yser, the more I appreciated what Bridges had said of the King.

After luncheon, I drove General de Lisle, Colonel Bridges and Hardress Lloyd to Nieuport-les-Bains, once a sea-coast summer resort at the mouth of the Yser. The Allied trench line was roughly the line of the canal. On the coast in the sandy dunes, the Allies' trenches had been pushed a bit to the Ostend side, but Dixmude was still in German hands.

Not a single inhabitant of Nieuport-les-Bains was in the town—not a man, woman or child. The French Tirailleurs d'Afrique, part of a splendid division of French Colonials that had been sent by Foch to "stiffen" that part of the line, occupied the ruins of the summer resort that was. The typical French summer hotels in Nieuport-les-Bains were, for the most part, shapeless piles of dÉbris.

The Huns never succeeded in actually penetrating the town, though Von Beseler's troops tried hard to take it. The Germans reached the river bank which formed the town's boundary on the north.

The main thoroughfare was blocked at frequent intervals by great barricades made from bathing machines, hauled in a row and filled with sand and paving stones. Asphalt tennis courts were scarred with shell-holes. No open space had been spared during the weeks of itinerant bombardment.

As we approached the town French batteries of "75's" were firing hard from positions in the dunes by the roadway.

The French General Officer Commanding arrived as we alighted from our car. But one house was standing in the northern edge of the town. Into it we filed on the heels of the French General, up its stair to the garret, and still up a rickety ladder to a point of vantage under the very eaves. Through shell-holes in the tile roofing, French observers directed the fire of the batteries below. Across the Yser, in front of us, we would see the French and German trenches among the low sand hills. For long spaces they ran but fifteen to twenty yards apart and in one sector a German sap was but five yards from the French escarpment.

For a time we watched the shells from the "75's" bursting over the German trenches. Descending, we crossed the Yser practically at its mouth. A pontoon bridge, vaunting a placard showing it had been christened the "Pont Gal Joffre," led between twin piers. The bridge swayed and tossed like the deck of a channel steamer as we picked our way gingerly across it. Some months later a Jack Johnson, luckily placed by the enemy, entirely smashed that pontoon bridge.

Gaining the northern bank we zig-zagged through deep trenches in the sand, reinforced here and there with timbers and stone. An open crater and a pile of dÉbris marked what had once been a lighthouse. Dug-outs, shelters in miniature, lined the sides of the crater nearest the Huns. The open bowl of sand was about forty feet in diameter. Near its centre gaped a shell-hole in the soft sand made by an unwelcome visitor which had come less than a half hour previously. Digging for a few moments, I unearthed the still warm timing-fuse of the 105-millimetre shell that had made the hole.

The lighthouse position was, the sergeant of Tirailleurs said, a mauvais place. From morning until night of the day before the Huns had shelled it. Many shells had fallen in the hours just preceding our arrival. General de Lisle and Colonel Bridges left Hardress Lloyd and me there, "for safety," while they walked through the front line positions, which were from a hundred to a hundred and sixty yards further forward.

I investigated the interiors of the tiny dug-outs during the General's absence. No shell fell near, however, and soon we were all retracing our steps to Nieuport-les-Bains. Once a sniper spied one of the party, and a bullet from his rifle kicked up a spurt of sand a few feet from my head. We acknowledged the attention by an additional foot or so of "stoop" thenceforth.

Over a cup of tea at Colonel Bridges' headquarters, I met an old acquaintance in Lady Ross, who had that day handed to the Queen of the Belgians a cheque for £1,000 for Belgian sufferers. Lady Ross told me of an interesting conversation with King Albert at luncheon. After discussing at length the general subject of the difficulty of realisation of war's hardships and atrocities by those whose homes have been far from the actual scenes of war, the conversation drifted to the refugee question. King Albert agreed that all able-bodied Belgians of military age should be with the Army, and declared emphatically his intention to press for steps that would lead to such a consummation.

The result of my visit to Furnes and Nieuport-les-Bains was to confirm my impression that the Germans had fortified their positions along the coast, and so entrenched themselves that to take Ostend by direct land attack was impossible, except at very great cost indeed.

The assistance that could be given by the Admiralty to such a project was greatly discounted by the fact that the ships available were out of range when outside the sandbanks that lay near the coast, and outclassed by the enemy's land batteries when inside the banks.

Many folk visited the Belgian Army in the trenches during those January days. Less than a week after we had visited Furnes, a couple of us ran to Dunkirk on Sunday to buy some fresh fish, a delicacy as rare as it was wholesome. While in Dunkirk I saw Lord Northcliffe and my old friend Max Pemberton, who had come over for a "weekend at the Front" with the Belgians. The next day eighteen German aeroplanes flew over Dunkirk and dropped several bombs, doing some material damage and killing one civilian.

On Tuesday, January 12th, General de Lisle ran to Boeschoeppe, south-west of the St. Eloi area, to see General T. O'D. Snow and his 27th Division. While waiting for the General I had good opportunity to see and talk to some of the newly arrived men. They had been marched about fourteen miles before being put into the trench-line, then marched back to billets when relieved. Some had come back from eight to eleven miles on foot. As they were not supplied with changes of socks or any sort of patent solution for their feet, and as the trenches were at places knee-deep in water, a general epidemic of frost-bitten feet could but be expected.

Limping along the frozen road, with socks wound about their poor feet, I felt great sympathy for the Tommies. Before three days had passed I heard that the 27th Division sick-list had been augmented by over two thousand cases of "bad feet." One Brigade Major in the Division told of over one thousand cases in his Brigade alone. A bad business, entailing great suffering and more permanent disablement than a little, all for want of proper foresight.

Small engagements with the enemy all along the line were constantly taking place. Official reports teemed with briefly and baldly told stories such as the following:—

Quiet days found many a British soldier hard at work over a French-English "conversation-book." Some of these were hurriedly prepared and of a character truly extraordinary. One such book, made up for the benefit of an industrious young man, contained a question that, translated, ran thus:—

"Q. Where is the cat of my mother's aunt?"

"A. No, but the kittens are drowned."

In Vermelles, on January 15th, I took a dozen photographs showing the devastation that can be worked by French high explosive shells.

Vermelles was an object lesson. Held by the Germans as strongly as any town was held in front of the French position south of the La BassÉe canal, trenched and barricaded with wonderful skill, and well supported by a mass of guns, its capture was only effected after weeks of sapping and an artillery bombardment that had up to that time been without parallel. Its ruins held texts for innumerable sermons on the newer strategy of present-day warfare.

A French officer of standing had told me that he considered the taking of Vermelles from the Germans a most hopeful sign that the French could take any and all German positions in like manner, if they cared to pay the price in men and ammunition.

Geographically, Vermelles was in what was bound to prove a "warm corner." The German thrust westward from La BassÉe, with Bethune as an objective, had cost the British Expeditionary Force some of the hardest fighting it had seen.

In that area our Second Corps, then the Indian Corps, and lastly our First Corps, with the French troops at times in action with us, had withstood a battering that no other point in the long line from the sea to the Vosges, save possibly the Ypres Salient, had been called upon to stand.

The German advance to the westward had reached Vermelles, and there been held. Their farthermost line was in front of the western edge of the town, and close to the main road that led through it. The enemy was in possession of Vermelles for a couple of months.

As no English troops had participated in the taking of Vermelles from the Huns, except for the assistance rendered by some of our heavier batteries, we knew little of what had happened in that theatre save that six weeks of sapping, a mad rush after an unprecedented bombardment, and terrific hand-to-hand bayonet fighting in the streets, had resulted in the French occupation of the town on December 7th.

Our visit had been arranged for us by Captain Fresson, the French liaison officer attached to 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters. General de Lisle, Colonel Home, Major Hambro, Fresson and I were in the party.

Coming out of Bethune, on the Lens road, we passed through Beuvry, then through Shilly-Labourse.

In the fields by the roadside were trenches, increasing in frequency along the road from Sailly to Noyelles-lez-Vermelles.

When Noyelles was passed, and we could glance across the slightly rolling fields that led eastwards to Vermelles, a mile distant, a little world of trenches met the eye. Some giant, prehistoric mole, crazed with pain and bent on expending his agony on the surface of Mother Earth, might have so ripped the fields.

Not rows of trenches, but curved and twisting galleries upon galleries of them. For the first time I began to get an inkling of what real trench warfare—the battles of the pick and shovel—meant.

At the headquarters of the French General who was in command of that section of the line a most elaborate dÉjeuner had been prepared for the party, with the result that it was well into the afternoon before we left the hospitable Frenchman and, in tow of a member of his staff, commenced our tour of sight-seeing.

Most buildings thereabouts were shell-scarred; some were burned. No inhabitants were to be seen. The boom of distant shells was ever present, and now and then one burst in sight of us. Detachments of French infantry marched past frequently.

We ran to Noyelles, which was full of hard-as-nails-looking French soldiers.

There the party alighted, and guided by a young French infantry officer, who had seen the fighting over that ground, walked across the trench-scarred battle-field eastward to Vermelles.

I followed sufficiently far to gain an idea of the lie of the land, then returned to Noyelles and took my car to Vermelles by road, arriving in advance of the others. This allowed me a long stroll of inspection, to be augmented later by a second tour in the company of the General, with a French Staff officer as escort.

The German first line trenches to the west of the town were well constructed. Though they had been considerably damaged by the rain of shells that had been poured on them, they were not as badly demolished as one might expect. Back of this first line of defence was a second line, weaving in and out—here in front, now behind, now through, the string of houses on the west of Vermelles' main street.

In the southern portion of the town were the ruins of the ChÂteau Watteble. The grounds of the once imposing chÂteau allowed a sufficiently clear space for still another formidable trench-line. Behind that the enemy had placed other lines, burrowing here and there at points of vantage through the town. Adjacent to the chÂteau were piles of bricks that once had been a fine farm, the Ferme Brion, and in front of it, completely demolished, and bearing no semblance of shape or form that would indicate its original outlines, was a chapel, where a German gun had been placed. This gun, a French officer told me, had been served gallantly until the French were but fifty yards distant, when a battery of the famous "75's" found the range and totally annihilated the gun, the chapel, and any of the enemy who were so unfortunate as to be in its vicinity.

The church, its square tower battered out of shape, was still the most conspicuous landmark of the country round. Another sample of devastation was the brewery, and attached to it an elaborate dwelling, one portion of which was built over a metal frame. All the covering had been torn from the iron girders, leaving the mere skeleton of the framework practically intact, a weird sight.

The German trenches and communications burrowed so consistently everywhere from the western edge of the town, and on through to the eastward, that every foot of ground afforded opportunity for study. These lines of defence, all connected and fed by approach trenches, cleverly constructed, with their traverses and reserve off-shoots, led away for hundreds of yards to the rear of the front line.

That, then, was the town the French had to face, defended by machine-guns in splendid emplacements, every position well manned. The first line commanded an open front of slightly rising ground, clear of all obstacles and capable of being swept for 800 to 1,000 yards. Military science in trench construction had been aided by ingenuity of a high order, and hours of wandering over and through the rabbit warrens made for men, as cleverly as ever rodent designed his burrow, found one discovering new wonders at every step.

The trenches proper were for the most part deep and narrow, stout of wall, reinforced with every manner of material likely to strengthen the defensive ramparts and bastions. Here the thickness of a piece of house wall had been doubled by sandbags. There the face of a trench had been reinforced by huge stones, interspersed with all sorts of receptacles, such as water-buckets, cooking utensils, wheel-barrows, and all manner of tins, filled with brick, small stones or cement.

A woman's bodice neatly tied about a few pounds of stone, the wooden cover of a household sewing-machine, loaded with brick, and even a stout brown-paper cardboard box full of mortar, caught my eye as I searched the stoutly-built wall curved round and back and round again through what had once been a house-yard. Traverses that demanded admiration from the most apathetic student of engineering, loops of trenches that commanded every front, approach trenches that wriggled like some great yellow-brown snake off toward the rear, were perfect each one in its own way.

Practically every point in the town could be reached by a German on tour of inspection of its defences, without the necessity of his leaving cover, save to cross the roadway of the main thoroughfare. Beside all this under-the-surface protection, the shelter of the buildings, all constructed of brick or stone and strongly built, was by no means to be despised.

Truly, when the French officer said no place could be made more secure, there was some reason for his words. But strong as it was, and in spite of its splendid artillery support, the position was one that the French had to take, whether or no. Six long weeks of constant work was represented by those torn and wounded fields that stretched away westward to Noyelles. Sapping their way, entrenching and consolidating every forward step, the little men in red and blue crept up to a line varying by from one to two hundred yards, and even nearer at one point, to the German front.

But sapping and mining, and entrenching and consolidating, so valuable in themselves, responsible for the finely fortified position of the Germans in Vermelles, and the splendid mole-advance against them by the French, was not the chief factor that was to play the decisive part in the war-game that culminated in the capture of the town on December 7th.

Gun-fire was the decisive element. To the beloved "soixante-quinze" was to go the chief honour. Only a careful personal inspection of the town could tell one the real story of Vermelles as I saw it on January 15th. The camera might assist, and, in spite of the dull weather, I obtained a few pictures with that end in view, but the camera could give one the story only haltingly and in part.

Not one building in all the town was unwrecked. The French "75's," with some aid from the British howitzers, reduced Vermelles to ruins in the most literal and complete sense. Every edifice, from the piles of brick around the few tottering walls that was once a proud chÂteau to the humblest barn or outbuilding, was in itself a study. The evidence left by such shell-fire of its power for evil is of fascinating interest owing to its infinite variety. One wall had withstood half-a-dozen punctures of varying diameter, holes four or five feet in width, some of them, while its fellow beside it had crumbled into a formless mass of dÉbris. Side by side were two houses, one with front practically intact, its roof gone and its interior and back portion blown to bits, the other minus front wall, but still standing, its roof at a crazy angle, resting insecurely on the remainder of the building, which, save for a scar here and there, escaped comparatively untouched.

It is this caprice of shell-fire that makes such a veritable hell of it.

Trenches with sides blown in; here a hole like a good-sized cellar; there a traverse filled to the level of the ground around it; a gap in the defence wall in front; iron-work twisted into grotesque shapes; stone-work pulverised; dÉbris in piles; with clothing, bedding, household implements, farm machinery and gear, child's toys, religious emblems, personal effects, and bundles of every description, all jumbled together in such an odd, unnatural way, that a laugh and a catch in the throat often came together.

Vermelles on that sodden day in January was full of French soldiers in reserve—men of the 131st and 262nd Infantry Brigades, some from 16th and some from 18th Corps units. The firing line proper was from three to four kilometres to the eastward. On the west side of the town a French battery was firing regularly, the shells singing over our heads. The German shells were falling frequently half a mile in front of us.

It was my good fortune to discover a French soldier who had seen the actual final bayonet attack which won the position. His story was graphic, but told in few words. The creeping up to the forward French trenches, the fierce bombardment, the wild charge, the discovery that in spite of the fact that the place had been literally blown to bits, and German dead strewn everywhere, some defenders still held on and manned the murderous machine-guns, until they felt the cold steel—it all seemed so matter-of-fact, and such a matter-of-course sort of story in such surroundings.

In each of the yards of the better-class dwellings and farms, including the grounds of the chÂteau and brewery, were graves of German soldiers. Many of these were marked with rude crosses bearing touching inscriptions. One such epitaph that caught my eye described the dead soldier as a good comrade; another as a brave man who had died for the Fatherland. Many of them bore a simple religious touch. One grave covered a German officer, buried by the French after the capture of the town. The French soldiers had marked his name and a respectful word or two on the rude cross above it, in obvious keeping with the inscriptions the Germans had written on adjacent crosses raised while they were in occupation.

In an effort to tell me how full the redoubts were of German dead, when Vermelles was at last taken, my soldier guide found that words failed him. They were everywhere, he said.

Many of the graves, particularly those of the French soldiers buried thereabouts, were headed by black or white metal wreaths.

"It cost dear," said my soldier, "and we paid. But a Boche who lived through the last few days of the fighting here, and escaped from that last charge, will be able to tell a story."

The deep cellar of a ruined house—a mere brick arched cell of a place without a ray of daylight—had been quite habitably fitted up as a cave-dwelling by the Germans, who had saved a piano from one of the wrecked rooms above and cosily stowed it away in a corner.

One or two underground caves just back of the German front line of trenches, bomb-proofs for the officers apparently, were ingeniously secure.

Though Vermelles at the time of our visit had been in French hands for more than a month, one could find many such souvenirs as shell-heads and timing-fuses without troubling to stir the piles of wreckage.

I could, I thought, sit in Vermelles and write reams of detail in description of the terrible havoc of war, but I found that mere generality as to the scenes of desolation wrought in the town soon used up my vocabulary. The place was no less a graveyard of brave men than of strenuous human effort, none the less to be admired because it proved abortive. Over all brooded the horror of war and the more specific and tangible horror of gun-fire. "Low trajectory and high explosive are twin demons, and this is their devil's work," the shattered town seemed to say.

Knots of French soldiers or visiting British officers walked about sombrely and spoke in low tones, as if in the actual presence of the dead, in spite of the weeks that had flown by since Vermelles had echoed to the crash of a bursting shell.

The French soldiers were a tough-looking lot of customers. A bit nondescript as to uniform, and universally campaign worn, unshaven, and mud-plastered, they looked stout and fit for anything. A friendly class of men, respectful to British officers to a degree, a fact that spoke not only of good discipline, but of fine French traditions of politeness. They impressed me as splendid war material, and more, as men of fine character and indomitable determination.

Sport behind the lines began to assume quite a healthy state in January. Packs of beagles and hounds and pairs of greyhounds were brought "out" by enthusiasts, and cross-country courses with rare jumps were carefully mapped out.

Alas! for "Le Sport." An order came along one day from G.H.Q. which stated that "the Commander-in-Chief regrets that it is necessary to prohibit any more hunting, coursing, shooting, or paper-chasing. This order comes into effect at once."

The 2nd Cavalry Brigade drew up a splendid steeplechase programme, which the state of the ground would not have allowed, had no order from G.H.Q. been promulgated.

A card of "beagle-meets" was issued, and formed the following somewhat pretentious propaganda:—

"THE 2ND CAVALRY BRIGADE BEAGLES
WILL MEET—

The Prince of Wales ran more than once with that pack of beagles, and ran well.

Football matches were allowed, and were daily fought out between the various regimental teams.

General Robertson succeeded General Murray as Chief of the Staff at G.H.Q., a change generally welcomed, as Robertson was held in very high esteem throughout the Army. Many of us considered him the greatest man the British Army had produced throughout the campaign. That is certainly how I should describe him.