d off on my search
one night. Take it from me--a fairy's is a poor job out there, and when
you've read the next bit you'll agree.

Behind our position stood the old ruined chateau, and beyond it one or
two scattered cottages. I had never really had a good look at all at
that part, and as I knew some of our reserve trenches ran around there,
and that it would be a good thing to know all about them, I decided to
ask the Colonel for permission to creep off one afternoon and explore
the whole thing; incidentally I might by good luck find a table. It was
possible, by wriggling up a mud valley and crawling over a few scattered
remnants of houses and bygone trenches to reach the Colonel's
headquarter dug-out in daytime. So I did it, and asked leave to go off
back to have a look at the chateau and the land about it. He gave me
permission, so armed with my long walking-stick (a billiard cue with the
thin part cut off, which I found on passing another chateau one night) I
started off to explore.

I reached the chateau. An interesting sight it was. How many shells had
hit it one couldn't even guess, but the results indicated a good few.
What once had been well-kept lawns were now covered with articles which
would have been much better left in their proper places. One suddenly
came upon half a statue of Minerva or Venus wrapped in three-quarters of
a stair carpet in the middle of one of the greenhouses. Passing on, one
would find the lightning conductor projecting out through the tapestried
seat of a Louis Quinze chair. I never saw such a mess.

Inside, the upstairs rooms were competing with the ground-floor ones, as
to which should get into the cellars first. It was really too terrible
to contemplate the fearful destruction.

I found it impossible to examine much of the interior of the chateau, as
blocks of masonry and twisted iron girders closed up most of the doors
and passages. I left this melancholy ruin, full of thought, and
proceeded across the shell-pitted gardens towards the few little
cottages beyond. These were in a better state of preservation, and were
well worth a visit. In the first one I entered I found a table! the very
thing I wanted. It was stuck away in a small lean-to at the back. A nice
little green one, just the size to suit us.

I determined to get it back to our shack somehow, but before doing so
went on rummaging about these cottages. In the second cottage I made an
enormously lucky find for us. Under