!

"At about 10.30 p.m. we saw the Transport set off along the road, taking
rations and supplies up to Ypres.... Humfrey went with them. (I would
have gone up with him, but the Adjutant of the 2/5th had sent a message
by the signals saying that I could sleep at the Transport Lines and
report the following morning.) Red Cross motors were also coming back
from Ypres with wounded. Meanwhile the moon--a full moon--steadily rose
above the Front, amid the flashes between Ypres and Messines, the
bombardment sounding like thunder. It was a fine scene. If only there
had been an artist there to paint it! A farm on the Switch Road (a new
road for traffic built by the British Army) some way off got on fire. I
hear that the King's, in our Brigade, are going over the top on a raid
to-night. Our great offensive here has not yet opened, but it will come
off before very long....

"To bed 11.30, the guns booming like continuous thunder. I was awakened
in the night by shells whizzing past the hut where I was sleeping."

So I was, at last, introduced to that strangest of all music--the
screech of a shell: _Whoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-UMP!_

CHAPTER II

THE PRISON

It has already been observed that the 55th (West Lancashire) Division,
after a hot time on the Somme, particularly at Guillemont and Ginchy,
had come up the Salient in October, 1916. So when I joined the Division
it was in the 8th Corps, commanded by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston
("Hunter-Bunter," as I remember Best-Dunkley calling him), in Sir
Herbert Plumer's Second Army. The 55th Division was responsible for the
sector between Wieltje and the south of Railway Wood.

The 55th Division was commanded by Major-General Jeudwine, of whom it
has been said: "No General ever was more devoted to his Division: no
Division ever was more devoted to its General."[2] The three infantry
brigades in the Division were the 164th Brigade (Brigadier-General
Stockwell), the 165th Brigade (Brigadier-General Boyd-Moss), and the
166th Brigade (then commanded by Brigadier-General Lewis). The 2/5th
Lancashire Fusiliers, who had been commanded by Colonel
Best-Dunkley--an officer who had previously been Adjutant on the
Somme--since October 20, 1916, were in the 164th Brigade.

In those days a brigade consisted of four battalions. The other three
battalions in the 164th Brigade were the 1/4th King's Own Royal
Lancaster Regiment, commanded by Colonel Balfour, the 1/8th King's
Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool