ce that he had done them only in
obedience to superior orders, to which he had protested. The soldiers
who made the capture disclaimed a large part of the credit for it on the
ground that most of the Germans were drunk and that they were too dazed
to get to their arms. Stories of this sort keep piling in from every
side.

We got away at eleven to Lierre, where the King has established his
headquarters for his movement. The road lay to the southeast and was
through country I had not traversed before. The aspect was the same,
however--long stretches of destroyed houses and felled trees,
barbed-wire entanglements and inundated fields. It is a mournful sight.

Little Lierre was unharmed, and I hope it may remain so. The Grande
Place was filled with staff motors, and there was a constant coming and
going of motors and motorcycles bearing messengers to and from the field
of operations. Headquarters was established in the Hotel de Ville, which
bears on its tower the date 1369--a fine old building, not large, but
beautiful.

In the morning a message had come ordering Colonel DuCane back to
England. He was out in the field, and we had to wait until he came in to
deliver it to him. The King was also away, but we put in our time
talking with the officers on duty as to the movement and its progress,
and then went out for a stroll around the town. We looked into the old
church, and I stopped and bought an officer's forage cap as a souvenir
of the place. By the time we had poked around the neighbourhood and
inspected the other _Sehenswuerdigkeiten_ of the town it was lunch time
and we joined an officers' mess in the back room of a little cafe on the
square, and then, to kill time, sat in front of another cafe and had
coffee and a cigar.

We could not get started until Colonel DuCane had returned and received
his message, so we sat in front of our little cafe and growled. It was
maddening to waste our time there while the guns were thundering all
around us and we knew from the signs of activity at headquarters that
big things were toward. After a time a little man, the Senator for the
district, came out and asked us into his house, directly across the
street from the Hotel de Ville. It was raining hard and we were ready
for a change, so we accepted gladly and were entertained with champagne
and cigars to the music of falling rain and booming cannon.

Our Senator was very much down in the mouth about the situation in
general and