face p. 176
Looking east over the Menin Bridge at the edge of Ypres
Wormhoudt, a French-Flemish town on the main road from Dunkirk to Cassel, was selected for headquarters, and there we rested for four days before returning to our old home, the La Nieppe château, on the road from Cassel to St. Omer.
En route to Wormhoudt we passed the Indian Cavalry, coming up to relieve us as reserve. The Poona Horse, Sind Lancers, and Inniskilling Dragoons presented a fine appearance as they rode by.
Rest was welcome to the Division. The troops had not been in the actual firing-line, but had been in continual occupation of reserve trenches for days, frequently under heavy shell-fire, and rarely with an opportunity for taking off their boots or sleeping elsewhere than in the open.
The villages and farms around Wormhoudt provided excellent billets for the troopers. Barns filled with straw and flax were warm and comfortable resting-places after the days and nights in cold, damp trenches.
So April ended peacefully for us, the Germans holding what they had won on the 23rd and closing the month with a vigorous bombardment of Dunkirk, a few miles north of us, which served no useful military purpose, but gave the Huns the satisfaction of killing a fair number of civilians, including a good bag of women and children.