As I reluctantly crawled up into the rain after having shaken hands with the Lieutenant, my Commandant explained that the Germans would undoubtedly begin to search the immediate vicinity with their artillery to try to silence the gun which was throwing the "marmites" into them. As we had the provocative false hedge right behind us and no bomb-proof to crawl into, I had to agree that he was prudent.
And so we "beat it" through the downpour, sliding around in the oily Flemish mud, while the German guns began to drop whole kitchen-loads of "marmites" into a poor wrecked village five hundred yards to our left, from which they evidently suspected that our shots had come.
As we slithered along, drenched to the skin, toward the "Villa Beausejour" and our waiting motor, we could hear the Captain of 75's letting off salvo after salvo at the farm-house of which the prisoners had informed him, while behind us Julia continued to explode at half-minute intervals. There was all the difference in the world between the dry short report of the big howitzer and the hollower, sharper, more penetrating explosion of the 75's.
To-day I learned from the Captain of the 75's that his first few volleys had set the farm-house on fire. A lot of soldiers had come running to put the fire out. His guns kept on dropping and scattering these until, with a series of loud explosions, the whole farm-house had blown up. It turned out that it was not an officers' headquarters, but an ammunition store-house.
As to our blockhouse, I understand that it was completely demolished, though whether or not it took the whole of Julia's twenty shells to complete the work I was unable to learn.
VII
IN THE FLEMISH TRENCHES
Headquarters of the Belgian Army,
La Panne, Aug. 30.
To-day I was given the opportunity of comparing the trenches of Belgium with those I had visited in France. It was a very interesting contrast.