The General had disappeared on foot, the juvenile staff-officer was nowhere to be found, so off I went, in accordance with Barrett's instructions.
Darkness was coming on. I passed along lines of 2nd Cavalry Brigade troopers, marching toward Ypres and through it.
No lights were allowed, though my car was secure from liability of offence in that particular, for the electric installation had gone wrong, a not infrequent occurrence, and no one but a master electrician could coax a glimmer out of the headlamps.
Bump! Bump! I jolted from hole to hole in the smashed roadway. The streets were crowded with the machinery of the divisional relief in full swing. Ypres seemed more smashed, if possible, than when we had last passed through six days before. From the Grande Place down the Rue de Menin, to the bridge and Menin Road beyond, and well out past the fork, where the roads branched to Zonnebeke and Menin respectively, the path was narrow and tortuous. Piled high on either hand were heaps of débris, alternated with chasms, some sufficiently deep so that a fall to the bottom would put a car promptly hors de combat.
An unpleasant smell of burning flesh came from the smouldering mounds lining the way.
Star-shells and trench lights from the firing line made it possible to see the road. Save for their assistance I could not have made the journey without accident.
The house where we were to spend the next few days was easily found. The officers of the 80th Infantry Brigade were busy in it arranging reliefs when I arrived.
A house of stout brick, badly scarred and knocked about, covered a cellar, low roofed and filled with foul air, but reasonably safe from shell-fire.
In this underground sanctuary the flickering light of a dozen candles fell on crowded tables for signallers, around which the men not busy with 'phone or ticker were asleep, heads resting on their crossed arms. Officers pored over maps spread on other tables, or were engaged in close attention to the receipt or despatch of innumerable orders. Against one wall were three or four bedsteads, covered with mattresses that had borne the wearied forms of a long succession of British fighting men, from general officers to privates, and bore ample evidences of having done so.
A battery of British guns were firing from a position near by, and German shells were bursting close enough to cause an interruption of a conversation by their constant crashes.