When I learned that one officer had suffered a badly cut eyeball, threatening the loss of his sight, and another had been seriously wounded in the jaw and neck by just such an incident as the one I had experienced, I was thankful to have escaped injury.
The "trench stoop" was astonishingly fatiguing. Covered from head to foot with yellow sticky mud, and very tired, we started to walk to the Menin Road. The snipers were more alert than usual, and more than one close call kept me from thinking of my weariness. Before we reached our car the German batteries shelled madly at the very point we were to pass, but considerately stopped firing by the time we approached the spot where the shells were falling.
One morning "Mouse" Tomkinson and Hardress Lloyd had walked down to Zillebeke, where folk rarely went in the daytime, to inspect some of the graves in the Zillebeke churchyard. Hardress Lloyd's brother-in-law, Colonel Wilson, of the Blues, was buried there.
I promised Captain Lloyd that if I could get off to do so, I would go down to Zillebeke and take a photograph of Colonel Wilson's grave.
Hearing of my projected trip, Lord Loch, who was at that time G.S.O. 1, on the staff of General Bulfin, commanding 28th Division, asked "Babe" Nicholson to obtain for him, if possible, a picture of the grave of Lieutenant Gordon-Lennox, which is also in Zillebeke.
Hardress Lloyd and Tomkinson told us they had been seen in the churchyard by the German artillery observers, who had commenced shelling. I was warned, therefore, that any photography I wished to do in that locality must needs be done quickly.
On March 4th Nicholson and I set out to obtain the desired pictures. I stopped on the way, at a cemetery on the Menin Road, and took a photograph of the graves of three officers of the 10th Hussars—Captain Annesley, Lieutenant Drake, and Captain Peto—who had fallen in the first battle of Ypres.
Zillebeke was lonely. On one edge of it a couple of signal corps men were laying a wire. Otherwise the town, which was in ruins, was deserted.
We kept under cover of the houses as much as possible. I obtained a good snapshot of the damaged church, and then took some pictures in the graveyard, which was torn with great shell-holes.
"Remember what Hardress said about the Huns being able to see us here," I said to Nicholson. "Let's get out of it."