This was our first
experience of what shortly became a common occurrence and we soon
learned that, in the field, a soldier never knows one day where he
will be the next, and thus he is always "expecting the unexpected."

[Illustration: Hotel Du Faucon]

We moved out at dawn and had another heart-breaking march as the
weather had turned very warm. Through Hazebrouck and numerous small
towns we continued our eastward way to Bailleul, stopping there for an
hour's rest. Our section happened to be right in the market square so
had a good opportunity to see some of the principal points of interest
in this famous and ancient city. The Hotel de Ville with its curious
weather-vane of twelfth-century vintage and the Hotel Faucon
particularly interested me: the former because I had read of it and
the latter because it had real beer on ice. This is the place which
Bairnsfather speaks of as the hotel at which one could live and go to
war every day and I afterward did that very thing, for one day;
leaving the front-line trenches in the morning, having a good dinner
at the Faucon and being back in the front line at night. That happened
to be Thanksgiving Day; November 25, 1915.

After our rest we continued on our way and arrived at the little town
of Dranoutre, in Flanders, about five o'clock in the evening and went
into bivouac. On this day's march we saw more evidence of war. Here
and there a grave beside the road; occasionally a house that showed
the effect of shell or rifle fire and, almost continually, firing at
airplanes, both Allied and German.

At our camp we found detachments of the East Kents (The Buffs), and
the Second East Surrey Regiment, from whom we were to take over a
sector of the line. They said that it was comparatively quiet at that
point but had been pretty rough a few months earlier.

The Machine Gun Section went in the next morning, two days ahead of
the infantry, and the East Surreys remained during the two days to
show us the ropes. They were a splendid lot of soldiers and I am sorry
to say that when they left us it was to go to Loos, where they were
badly cut up at the Hohenzollern redoubt. We never connected up with
them again.

CHAPTER III

IN THE MIDST OF A BATTLE-FIELD

It was a bright warm Sunday morning, that nineteenth day of September,
when we made our first trip to the front-line trenches. Only the
Number Ones, lance corporals, of each gun went in ahead, the guns and
remainder of