Huts beside the road teemed with Tommies.
As I entered La Clytte I well remembered my last day there, in November, 1914. Major Steele, of the R.A.M.C., and Captain Baron Le Jeune, a French liaison officer, both of them popular members of the 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters Staff, had been killed in La Clytte by the same shell. Another shell had that day gone close over General de Lisle and me as we were leaving the town.
Picking my way past a clumsy farm wagon, I thought of those days of "close calls." I was thankful no shells had fallen near me that morning.
As I drew past the cross-road in La Clytte, however, a scream sounded over my head, and a shell burst in the field not one hundred feet beyond me.
I was off like a flash, abandoning all thought of saving my car from the rough bumping over the broken pavé. It seemed weird, that lone shell, so close to me in La Clytte. No more came, or at least, if they did so, I did not hear them, and I soon passed Dickebusch.
A two hours' wait in snow and sun and snow again saw the arrival of General de Lisle, and we were promptly off for "home."
Such days were fair samples of my work until March winds had ceased to blow, and April, with its promise of an early spring, had come.