oken vehicles. At intervals along the road there were vast dumps
of ammunition and stores, and on the side tracks huge piles of every
sort of salvage.

Forward again of B.H.Q. the country was perhaps not so badly smashed,
except in the spots most exposed to shell fire. But the shell-holes
were often full of German dead--I counted nearly 100 within a quarter
of a mile of Dan Cottages. And on the forward wooden tracks used by
our transport, the ground reeked like a slaughter-house. Fragments of
everything just swept off the tracks. The limbs and bodies of the
pack-mules lying sometimes in heaps sometimes at intervals all along
the route. Of course the nearer you approached to Passchendaele Ridge
the drier and firmer was the ground. But that awful swamp behind has
probably no parallel in the history of war. How the Engineers overcame
it is really a marvel. And great credit indeed must be given to this
very efficient branch of the Army, and to the men who laboured there
under the terrible conditions around them. I have mentioned the German
dead; there was no doubt little time to give to them. But I hardly saw
one body of a British soldier who had been left without burial.

On December 15 I went with General Riddell to visit the 5th N.F.
Battalion H.Q. at Tyne Cottages, some pill-boxes about half-way
between forward B.H.Q. and Passchendaele. It was a long walk, and we
went up the Zonnebeke Road till we were in the neighbourhood of that
village, then along the mule track to Tyne Cottages. Whilst we were
talking with Major A. Irwin at the pill-box a few light shells came
over and sprinkled us with earth. It was best to be either inside or
well away from a pill-box: but as the entrance to this pill-box was
like a rabbit-hole and close to the ground General Riddell preferred
to stand outside. After that we paid a visit to Dan Cottages, and
returned back along the wooden tracks to Ypres.

[Illustration: Plan of B.H.Q. (Judah House), Dan Cottages.]

Next day B.H.Q. went forward to Dan Cottages and stayed there for four
days. The Brigade observers were employed in two ways, partly as
observers and partly as a gas guard for the B.H.Q. pill-box. This
pill-box had already stood one or two strong blows from shells, but it
still appeared to be pretty sound. The door of course faced the enemy,
but was protected by a stout concrete wall and a bank of earth outside
that.

It will be seen from the above plan that the quarters were v