nd it always a good thing to make
the men think the job that they are doing is of great importance. Better
results are obtained that way.

We went to an "engineer dump" on the way up just after the enemy had
landed a shell on a wagon loading building material, and wounded were
being carried off and the mangled horses had been dragged on one side. As
the wounded came by I called my section to attention, the compliment due
to wounded men paid by units drawn up.

We drew our sandbags in the usual way by requisitioning for five thousand
and getting one thousand. Always ask for more than you expect to get.

As we came into Ypres, a military policeman on duty told me it was
unhealthy to go the usual way through the Market Square, because the
shelling was bad in that part of the town, so I spread the machines out
and started on down a side street. We were getting on finely and I was
congratulating myself on getting through, when two houses, hit from the
back, collapsed across the street in front of my machine. Without any
ceremony I turned my machine back along the street which we had come and
went through the Market Square down the Lille road, under the gate, being
followed by my section. About four hundred yards down I stopped; holding
my solo motor cycle between my legs, standing up, I looked back. I counted
my machines as they came up. If it hadn't been so scary, it really would
have been funny, to see these machines coming down the road through shell
holes and over piles of bricks, as fast as the drivers could make them go.
The men were hanging on for dear life and the machines rocked from side to
side, but they were all there.

Down the road we went to the houses; there we parked the machines and
unpacked. A guard was placed over them and the rest of us marched down to
the trenches.

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An officer has to buy all his own equipment and is allowed two hundred and
fifty dollars by the Government towards the cost. An officer carries a
revolver, but all junior officers as soon as possible acquire a rifle. The
men of a "salvage company" were collecting all the rifles, bayonets, and
parts of equipment near where I was to-day and I managed to get a
Lee-Enfield (British rifle) in good shape. I felt that I would like to
have a rifle and bayonet handy. I found a good-looking bayonet sticking in
the side of a sandbag wall. It looked lonely. The scabbard I am using was
restin