cross to a cellar about
five doors out of the square. A chunk had been blown out of the building
and there was no difficulty in getting into the cellar, and as soon as I
got to this place the child murmured, "_Bon! bon!_" and indicated she
would go in there. I set her down and she turned her pretty little face
to me for a kiss. She then caught my arm as I was about to go and
slipping off a tiny locket from her little neck, handed it to me,
indicating that she wanted me to keep it. I have it to this day and I
prize it tenderly. It has a small picture of the patron saint of France,
Joan of Arc.

I ran back to her mother, pointed out where the child was, but she still
seemed afraid to venture across. Although my little adventure did not
occupy over three minutes, I could wait no longer, and jumped on my
horse and the train of wagons trotted sharply out of the square. As the
last wagon was leaving, I heard a sound like a train leaving a
depot--choo! choo! choo! choo! growing louder each instant, and as the
tail-end of the last wagon was trotting out of the square a shell, the
largest ever employed by the German command and called the Ypres
Express, landed full in the square, killing every living thing there and
destroying ambulances and wagons of every kind, catching our rear wagon
and blowing it up, wounding the driver and destroying the magnificent
Cloth Hall, the last vestige of this most beautiful piece of
architecture being destroyed by the resulting fire. That shell was from
one of two guns that were expressly manufactured for the purpose of
destroying the city of Ypres, a couple of months being taken to build
cement platforms in which to set the ordnance, and the death-dealing
monsters started on their mission of destruction from Dixmude, about 22
miles distant.

[Illustration: British Battery in Action]

Not long after, an airplane located these monsters and succeeded in
destroying one by a downpour of explosives he dropped on it, and the
other one, a couple of days following, when being fired by its crew,
the shell exploded in the gun itself, tearing it from its cement
foundation and destroying itself and crew. These were the only guns of
that caliber that have ever been used, so far as is known. The passage
through the air of those missiles of death, heralded by their choo!
choo! sent a shiver of dread up and down the lines as far as the sound
would reach, and deep and lasting was the satisfaction of all ranks