before Roake called me out to
watch a scrap between British and German aeroplanes over the Salient. We
got out our field-glasses and, in the cool of a summer's evening, when
any ordinary individual in "Blighty" would be relaxing from the labours
of the day in cricket or in tennis, we surveyed with interest the
contests between the chivalrous heroes of the air far above. It was then
that I first saw a "blazing trail across the evening sky of Flanders."
There were many such in the summer of 1917, though the brilliant young
airman of whose death that glowing eulogy had been written now lay
sleeping beneath a little wooden cross in the grave in which the
Germans, paying homage to true chivalry, had laid him at Annoeullin. Who
could watch those little specks rising and falling, and falling to rise
no more, up there in the bright blue sky without a thrill of admiration
for these "New Elizabethans" of England and Germany?

It was during tea that I realized that I was really at the war. The guns
began to boom and the hut shook with the continual vibration. And then
the band of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers struck up some jolly tunes in
the field. War and music going hand in hand, it was difficult to know
whether one ought to feel jolly or sad. I think I may safely say that we
felt as jolly and gay as could be; I know that the romantic aspect was
the one which appealed to me most. This was the real thing, none of your
home-service games.

The bombardment became more intense as the evening progressed. After
dark the Transport moved off to carry rations up to the men in the line.
If it is not superfluous to do so, I would wish to pay here the warmest
possible tribute to those gallant Transport men who used to "carry
rations on the road from Pop to Ypres." It was no picnic. The Boche knew
quite well the time that vast and apparently never ending chain of
traffic would be wending its nightly way from Poperinghe to Ypres. He
shelled the great high road systematically every night. Every night
some of those gallant men would go never to return. It seemed marvellous
that so many could escape the destruction which was hurled at them; but
war is full of wonders.

My diary of that night reads as follows:

"As it began to get dark the bombardment became louder and louder and
the flashes more vivid. Shells were falling at Vlamertinghe, half way
between Poperinghe and Ypres, exploding with a great sound. They were
falling here yesterday