impossible to make a mistake even if you had tried to and
everybody was kindness and courtesy itself. An attendant removed the
decoration, placed it in a box and handed it to me; another attendant
handed me my coat and cap and I left the palace. "So much for
Buckingham!"

Soldiers were drilling in the courtyard and guards sprang to attention
and presented arms as I passed, while a policeman hailed a taxi for me
in which I drove to St. Paul's to see the most beautiful chapel
there--that of "The most distinguished order of St. Michael and St.
George."

As I drove by West Sandling camp and through Hythe to take the morning
packet back to France a cold raw wind searched my very bones. The
channel was rough enough to make the windward side of the deck wet and
unpleasant and the officers with which the boat was packed huddled
into their trench coats and British warms trying to keep out the cold.
The torpedo boat destroyers threshed about hither and thither in
smothers of spray while away to the north the mine sweepers stretched
across from shore to shore intent upon their never-ending search.

It was rough travelling on the road to the north next day; rain, snow,
sleet and hail, driven by a stinging wind, lashed our faces during the
whole of the trip. En route we called at General Headquarters and Army
Headquarters to report, and arrived at noon in the little French town
on the Belgian border which was the new location of our field
laboratory.

The Major and Captain seemed glad to see me and escorted me to my new
billet near the railway station; there was no glass in the windows and
the room was very cold. The officers pointed out a big hole in the
pavement in front of the house, made the day before by a German bomb.
The bomb had killed a number of horses and several men and had blown
the glass out of all the windows in the neighborhood. But the Major
assured me that a bomb seldom struck twice in the same place and that,
as the Bosches were after the railway station close by at the end
of the street, the safest place was the immediate neighborhood of the
station. As this sounded quite logical, I remained at the billet until
summer time, though I never noticed any great eagerness on the part of
my two officers to move to the vicinity of the station from
comfortable billets in the centre of the town.

[Illustration: "HOME, SWEET HOME"--MUD TERRACE.]

The very next day the town was bombed again and one "dud" fell in