That day saw the German gunners increase their shelling all along the Ypres front. The trenches occupied by our division were vigorously bombarded, and several casualties reported. Ypres itself came in for a heavy share of the Hun "hate." The windows rattled and our house shivered as the howitzer shells smashed into all quarters of the town.
De Lisle visited the trench line, and both there and on his way back across the fields the shells fell very close to him. As he entered the headquarters house on his return, he said: "From what I can see, most of the big ones are falling at least four or five hundred yards from us thus far, but they may shell us out of this at any time."
The General suggested I should take a stroll with him along the moat wall and watch the trend of the bombardment. As we walked along the ramparts, the projectiles screamed overhead in dozens, seemingly coming continually closer. The rumph! r-r-r-rumph! as they exploded shook the high wall and made the whole city rock with the concussion. The Rue de Lille was rendered impassable that day.
General Plumer called, and after his departure I again started for a stroll on the ramparts. The shells searching for our batteries just across the moat were a fascinating sight. As I ran up the steep path, however, a crash came just ahead, and bits of metal showered about, striking sharply against the trees beside the path. My curiosity evaporated instantly, and I came down faster than I had gone up.
As dusk came, I took Major Fitzgerald to Hooge, from whence he went through a wood to the trenches to make the final arrangements for the explosion of a mine—the construction of which had been worked upon feverishly for some days—that all might be completed and the mine fired on that night, our last one in the trenches. The French, who were to relieve us, had also constructed a mine on our left, and the two were to be discharged at an interval of five minutes.
First the French mine was to be fired at 7·45 p.m., and 7·50 to the tick of the watch was to be the time for the explosion of our mine, less than a hundred yards away from the French one.
I was seldom in Hooge when it was not shelled, and that evening was no exception. The French had built safe dug-outs under the buildings still left standing. The château was completely ruined, as were most of the houses in the village.
As I was being entertained by a French officer, who produced a glass of splendid red wine, some thirty shells burst over us, most of them of the 210-millimetre type. One of them knocked off a corner of the building behind which I had sheltered my car.
Never was a locality more offensive to one's olfactory nerves than Hooge. It fairly reeked with all manner of various noxious smells. The English language contains words of too mild a character to allow a description of that feature of Hooge.
The front line was less than a kilometre distant. Rifle fire swelled and died away in long, rattling breaths. I became so accustomed to the punctuation of my conversation with shell-smashes and periods of heightened din from small arms and machine-guns that, when all would die down suddenly for an instant, the stillness felt ominously oppressive. The next spasm of sound came as a relief to the uncanny moments of twilight silence.