Our share in the show was small. The following order was issued to the brigades:
"At two p.m. to-day the French will attack Lizerne and Het-Sas. The 1st Cavalry Division are ordered to support the left flank of the French, acting in reserve. The Division will be saddled up by two p.m. and the horses of the 1st Cavalry Brigade collected in the area south-west of Woesten. By two p.m. the 1st Cavalry Brigade will assemble, dismounted, north of the Woesten-Oostoleteren road, about the nineteenth kilometre stone, ready to support in the direction of Pypegaale, if required. The 2nd and 9th Brigades will remain in their present positions, ready to support the 1st Cavalry Brigade dismounted."
This gave vague promise of a bit of fun, as Pypegaale was only a mile from the coveted Lizerne, to which the Huns were holding so doggedly.
But our participation in the mill was only to take place in the event of the French attack ending in disaster or resulting in such extraordinary success that the Germans would be put to absolute rout.
The shells fell all about in those days, and rarely did I visit the support positions—which I did scores of times each day—when the air was not full of the droning shells of our own and the French batteries, pounding the enemy's positions on the canal.
Shell-fire; aeroplanes, British, French and German; anti-aircraft shells, both ours and those of the enemy, and passing troops and batteries became such common sights as the hours went by that one hardly bestowed on them a passing glance.
A Belgian woman was caught, near a battery position, flashing signals with a piece of bright tin to a Hun airman high overhead. The French took her away, one stout soldier to each arm, to summary execution.
Children were at play at the roadside. A dozen boys were engaged in a mock bombardment. A bottle served as the hostile town. Stones made good shells. All waited for the order, "Fire!" and then rained shots at the target with a will. Now and then one of the children would say, "Rumph! rumph!" mockingly, as a Black Maria fell near enough to jar them, but for the most part they paid scant attention to the fierce cannonade in progress all about.
In a field by the road a man was ploughing stolidly. A woman was hanging her washing on the line, singing as she worked. A 13-pounder anti-aircraft shell buried itself a few yards away, but she evinced no interest in it, and did not even allow its coming to interrupt her song.