Shortly afterwards I saw Captain Bertram Neame, the Adjutant of the 18th Hussars, who had been wounded in the right hand and arm by one of the shells.
"An aeroplane marked with red, white and blue rings, but evidently a German flying false colours, circled round over the battery near us," said Neame, "and half a dozen German shrapnel fell there at once. Then the 'plane circled over the farm containing 18th Headquarters, and another farm which was sheltering most of A Squadron. Immediately afterwards shells poured into the two farms, and several of the men were hit."
Months after I read the diary of Captain T. O. Thompson, of the R.A.M.C., who was attached to the 18th Hussars.
His graphic account of the shelling in Elverdinghe that morning read as follows: "A Squadron were in the next farm, and all their men sleeping peacefully in the sunshine against the wall of a barn, when, without warning, a 'coalbox' arrived and landed full on one man. They found only an arm and a leg and his head. The next arrived later and wounded two men. The inhabitants of the farm cleared at a run, and some French territorials, who had been in that farm for seven months, went like greased lightning.
"The Colonel (Burnett), and Adjutant (Neame), and Captain H. (Holdsworth), walked about thirty yards up the road, when a shell arrived and wounded the Adjutant in the hand and H. in the back. It hit the Colonel on the back, fortunately on the belt, and slightly wounded him in the thigh. It bruised the Major, who was twenty yards away, on the shin.
"The Germans kept on putting shells along the road, and then started on the village. They were the beastly 8·2 high explosives, and were going just over us on to the Poperinghe road. Six horses were going up this road when a shell landed about fifteen yards short of it. One of the grooms was badly wounded, one killed, being lifted into and left hanging in one of the trees by the roadside.
"Then the 4th Dragoon Guards came down the road on foot and passed into the village, but came out again as a shell greeted them in the square. They came off the road, and came along a hollow near the stream toward us. The rear squadron was marching along a ditch behind a hedge-row in two-deep formation when a beastly shell landed right in the ditch and hurled four of them sixty feet into the air. Two others were killed as well. Brown, a 4th D.G. Lieutenant, was one of the four; his hand was found in the stream one hundred and fifty yards away."
All things considered, I was lucky to get out of Elverdinghe unhurt that morning.
I found General de Lisle as he was returning from Woesten with Captain Nicholson; I then ran to Woesten with a message for General Briggs.