"The few of my poor chaps that are left," a 28th Division subaltern told me, "seem to have the idea their number is up. They keep saying that if they don't get it to-day they'll sure get it to-morrow. Hardly any of them have much hope of getting out alive. I keep trying to hearten 'em, but it's rotten work. Every time I rip out something intended to be cheerful along comes a Jack Johnson and blows up a whole bally section of trench, burying alive those it don't kill. Then the poor beggars alongside just nod at each other and say: 'You and me next, Bill,' and what in hell can I tell 'em?
"Why in the deuce we don't have more guns up here I'd like to know. It does get sickening to be shelled, and shelled, and shelled, day and night, and hear so little of the same sort of stuff going over their way. Damn the German guns, anyway."
I sympathised with him, and told him so.
"I would like to see what de Lisle would do if he was running the guns," I told him. "He would send some hell of his own making over to those Huns if he was doing it, from what I have heard him say."
Odd prophetic fragment of comfort, that. Three days thereafter de Lisle was given command of the whole Verlorenhoek-Hooge front and all the artillery east of the canal, a territory which he soon had "stiff with guns." In spite of the preponderance of the Germans in heavy ordnance our gunners gave the enemy good packages of the medicine with which our hammered troops had been dosed for so many weary days.
The run back over the Menin Bridge and through Ypres safely accomplished, we visited the headquarters of General Snow, commanding 28th Division. While waiting there a Hun howitzer shell ambled lazily over my head and exploded a couple of hundred yards beyond, throwing up a great cloud of black smoke.
"Enemy airmen spotted this little lot," said a passing "red-hat." "Warm time coming for Snow."
His anxiety was unnecessary, however, for the next shell went much further over us, and another two further still, as if searching for moving troops far behind the line.
The 3rd Cavalry Division troopers, loaded in motor-buses, went Ypres-ward during the afternoon. General Sir Julian Byng had taken Allenby's place at Cavalry Corps, and General Briggs had been given command of the 3rd Cavalry Division in Byng's place. The British Army contained no finer soldier than Briggs. This left the 1st Cavalry Brigade without a G.O.C., as General Meakin, who had been appointed to that command, was in England on sick leave. Consequently Colonel "Tommy" Pitman, of the 11th Hussars, was placed in temporary command of the 1st Brigade. Pitman, like Briggs, was a born leader of men—a tower of strength in himself.
Once during the afternoon my work took me to Ypres, but not beyond it. A fresh attack was on, and the Boches were sweeping the Menin Bridge and the road beyond with shrapnel.