o
north of us, and that was all. The Boche had undoubtedly stolen away.
For a long time the only sound was the warning shout, passed from front
to rear, that told of shell-holes in the roadway.

On the outskirts of the village we saw signs of the Hun evacuation:
deserted huts and stables, a couple of abandoned motor-lorries. The
village itself was a wreck, a dust-heap, not a wall left whole after
our terrific bombardments. Not a soul in the streets, not a single
house habitable even for troops. Of the mill that had been Brigade
Headquarters three years before, one tiny fragment of a red-brick wall
was left. The bridge in front of it had been scattered to the winds;
and such deep shell-craters pitted the ground and received the running
water, that the very river-bed had dried up. On the other side of the
village batteries of our own and of our companion brigade moved slowly
along. It was 2 A.M. when we encamped in a wide meadow off the road.
When the horses had been tethered and fed and the men had erected their
bivouacs, the colonel, Major Mallaby-Kelby, and we five remaining
officers turned into one tent, pulled off boots and leggings, and slept
the heavy dreamless sleep of healthily tired men.

At 7 A.M. the colonel announced that he and myself would ride up to
Becourt Chateau to visit the C.R.A. We touched the southern edge of
Albert, familiar to thousands of British soldiers. The last time I had
been there was on my return from leave in January 1917, when I dined
and slept at the newly-opened officers' club. Since the Boche swoop
last March it had become a target for British gunners, and seemed in as
bad a plight as the village we had come through the night before. We
had no time to visit it that morning, and trotted on along a road lined
with unburied German dead, scattered ammunition, and broken German
vehicles. The road dipped into a wood, and the colonel showed me the
first battery position he occupied in France, when he commanded a 4.5
how. battery. Becourt Chateau was so much a chateau now that Divisional
Headquarters were living in tents outside. Four motor-cars stood in the
courtyard; some thirty chargers were tied to the long high railings;
motor despatch-riders kept coming and going. R.A. were on the far side
of the chateau, and when our grooms had taken our horses we leapt a
couple of trenches and made our way to the brigade-major's tent. The
brigade-major was frankly pleased with the situation. "We are