d a dead horse lying across the
road. The noise of shrapnel bursting about us only ceased occasionally,
making way for ghastly, ominous silences. And the rain kept pouring
down.

What a march! As we proceeded, the road got rougher and narrower: debris
of all sorts, and horrible to look upon, lay about on either side. We
halted suddenly, and were allowed to "fall out" for a few minutes.

I and my section had drawn up opposite what had once been an estaminet.
I entered, and told them all to come in and stay there out of the rain.
The roof still had a few tiles left on it, so the place was a little
drier than the road outside. The floor was strewn with broken glass,
chairs, and bottles. I got hold of a three-legged chair, and by
balancing myself against one of the walls, tried to do a bit of a doze.
I was precious near tired out now, from want of sleep and a surfeit of
marching. I told my sergeant to wake me when the order came along, and
then and there slept on that chair for twenty minutes, lulled off by the
shrapnel bursting along the road outside. My sergeant woke me. "We are
going on again, sir!" "Right oh!" I said, and left my three-legged
chair. I shouted to the section to "fall in," and followed on after the
battalion up the road once more. After we had covered another horrible
half-mile we halted again, but this time no houses were near. How it
rained! A perfect deluge. I was wearing a greatcoat, and had all my
equipment strapped on over the top. The men all had macintosh capes. We
were all wet through and through, but nobody bothered a rap about that.
Anyone trying to find a fresh discomfort for us now, that would make us
wince, would have been hard put to it.

People will scarcely credit it, but times like these don't dilute the
tenacity or light-heartedness of our soldiers. You can hear a joke on
these occasions, and hear the laughter at it too.

In the shattered estaminet we had just left, one of the men went behind
the almost unrecognizable bar-counter, and operating an imaginary
handle, asked a comrade, "And what's yours, mate?"

Again we got the order to advance, and on we went. We were now nearing
the village of Wieltj, about two miles from St. Jean, which we had
passed. The ruined church we had seen was at St. Jean.

The road was now perfectly straight, bordered on either side by broken
poplar trees, beyond which large flat fields lay under the mysterious
darkness. As we went on we could see a faint