The lonely cows ambled inquisitively toward me, and were evidently greatly appreciative of a thorough milking, though few cared to drink milk from cows pastured in that poisoned zone, where every inch of ground was septic.
On a dash through Ypres at daybreak I again saw the poor hunted collie. Many mongrels thereabouts were frankly glad of a kind word and a pat on the head, but the high-bred, beautiful collie, his splendid coat matted and bedraggled, was so thoroughly frightened that all my efforts to get close to him were fruitless. It was wicked to leave him to death by a chance shell, and more than one of us risked carrying away a shell-souvenir in a vain attempt to save him.
At an early hour de Lisle said: "Find a shelter of some sort for your car, President. Don't forget that the Germans turn their shells down this road a bit at times."
A search resulted in the discovery of a maltster's, where some push-cyclists attached to a battalion of King's Royal Rifles cordially offered to make room for my battered conveyance. A passing ammunition train the night before had ripped off a front mud-guard, and a horse ambulance had crumpled one of the rear guards, while a transport mule had endeavoured to climb into the tonneau, to the sad detriment of my folded cape hood.
I never met a more cheery lot than those K.R.R. cyclists, who generously insisted on my sharing a tin of steaming hot tea and warming myself at their comfortable fire. They showed me a pump in the ruins of a house adjoining, enabling me to get a rare wash, and a still rarer shave, giving me a quite respectable appearance in comparison with my comrades of the 1st Cavalry Division Staff.
During the morning the General sent me to a riddled château not far distant, where General Mullens had placed 2nd Cavalry Brigade headquarters. An attempt to use the remains of the drawing-room as a more comfortable habitation than the cellar, was abandoned during the day, as coal-boxes fell with annoying regularity in the château yard.
A call at the headquarters of General Arbuthnot, C.R.A. of the 28th Division, in a house west of Ypres, found my lost despatch case had been sent there by Skinner of H Battery, to whom General Arbuthnot had kindly wired offering to keep it until I could call and reclaim it.
At Arbuthnot's headquarters I met a captain of his staff, who had been a military attaché in China before the Boxer troubles in 1900, and who knew many of the acquaintances I had made when campaigning with General Gaselee in the war with China.
In the course of conversation, I mentioned the prevailing belief in many quarters that unwritten truces existed between British and German gunners with regard to shelling certain areas. I instanced Dickebusch, a continual home of one of our divisional headquarters, which had been unshelled until our guns hammered a town in the German lines where Hun headquarters were thought to have been located, and thereafter was inundated with a steady rain of shell-fire for many days.