the road from Poperinghe to Ypres.

The transport driver told me what it was like in that part, how it had
been very quiet when the 55th Division took over their positions in the
Salient from the 29th Division the previous autumn, but had grown more
lively every day; how they had received a nasty gas bombardment only a
few days ago, how the Boche had recently taken to shelling us furiously
and systematically every night, and how there were some very hot times
ahead--there was to be a raid by a battalion in our brigade that night.

It was fairly quiet when I arrived--it was a time of the day when things
generally were somewhat quiet, when the guns were resting before joining
in the nightly fray--so I did not immediately notice how near to the war
I had come. But I was soon to realize it.

When I reached the Transport Lines I made the acquaintance of two
officers of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers of whom I was destined to see
much in the coming months, Philip Cave Humfrey and Joseph
Roake--especially Roake, as it was his good fortune to remain with the
Battalion until long after the cessation of hostilities and to be with
me in the 15th Lancashire Fusiliers in the Army of the Rhine. Humfrey,
by a curious coincidence, turned out--though I did not know it until
many months after--to be the brother-in-law of my school-friend William
Lindop!

Never shall I forget that summer evening near Brandhoek. Roake,
effervescing as always with droll wit, and Humfrey, with his natural
cheerfulness and affability, made me at home in their little hut at
once. I can well recall the scene: a tiny little wooden hut at the edge
of a large field; the wall adorned by a trench map of the Ypres Salient,
on which our present position was marked in pencil, and a striking
group photo of the Imperial War Cabinet, taken out of an illustrated
journal, in which the well-known faces of Lloyd George and Lord Curzon
seemed to dominate the picture; a little table upon which Humfrey
drafted a signal message to the Adjutant of the 2/5th, announcing my
arrival and asking for instructions, the table upon which an excellent
little dinner was almost immediately served; outside the observation
balloons in a curved line, denoting the Salient, and aircraft sweeping
through the skies.

It was then that I first saw what was going to be to me a very common
sight during those memorable "Wipers days"--an air fight. I had not been
in the little wooden hut many minutes