April 27th saw another strenuous effort by our gallant troops on that front. The southern edge of a wood, situated less than a mile west of St. Julien, was penetrated, but later the men returned to our original line.

The German official report said that the Huns fairly mowed down British troops when they advanced near St. Julien, and their artillery caught our men as they were retiring and inflicted frightful losses. Unfortunately, there was no exaggeration in that report.

Arriving at our headquarters château, east of Poperinghe, we found that half an hour earlier a dozen or more 17-inch shells had fallen in and about the town.

Poperinghe was being shelled daily, eleven townsfolk having been killed on the afternoon before. Most of the population had sought a more salubrious locality.

Of great interest to us was a huge shell-hole that had just been made in the château garden, fifty yards from our sleeping quarters. It was over thirty feet in diameter and ten or twelve feet deep.

The big shell had shattered every window in that district, and the concussion had ruined most of the tiled roofs within sight. Great shell splinters, weighing from five to thirty pounds, still warm, were lying about.

That night, after eleven o'clock, when all were asleep, four more 17-inch visitors arrived in that edge of Poperinghe. All four shook the château to its foundations, one falling within 100 yards of it and smashing three dwelling houses into one mass of splinters, plaster and débris.

General de Lisle was sleeping on the floor of the château dining room. The first of the mammoth quartette so shook the building that a lustre chandelier, housed in a dust-covering and therefore unnoticed, became detached and fell to the polished floor below. Its myriad tiny pieces of glass jangled musically as they showered over the General, who was sleeping peacefully beneath. Fortunately, de Lisle was not hit by any of the heavier portions of the costly ornament, but his emotions on being awakened from deep slumber by the resounding smash of the shell, followed by the crash of the falling chandelier and the attendant rain of tuneful prisms, can better be imagined than described.

For the rest of the night, the headquarters staff—with the exception of de Lisle himself—repaired to the cellar in search of less interrupted repose. The General, having ascertained that no other lustre chandelier was suspended from the ceiling, stuck to his original pitch.

The next morning at daybreak, 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters moved from that château, in spite of its many desirable attributes as a habitation.

On the 27th, General de Lisle sent me to the headquarters of Major Pilkington, of the 15th Hussars, on an errand. The reserve Belgian line was hard by. In backing my car, to turn it in the narrow lane, a bank of a reserve trench or ditch caved, and the poor car stood on its tail, at an uncomfortable and astonishing angle. Colonel Burnett and one of his 18th Hussar officers passed, and with their help and that of a dozen obliging 15th Hussar troopers, we attempted to move the brute. It resisted our combined efforts. Then the Belgians near by saw what had transpired and came at a run. In a jiffy the car was out, but having been lifted with more zeal than discretion was strained in so many places that it ran more like a crawfish than a car, until a week later, when time and opportunity allowed me to substitute an ample and expensive list of new parts.

Plodding through Poperinghe late that afternoon, the first of seven or eight 17-inch Boche "big 'uns" fell close behind me. I felt, rather than heard, a crash, the wave of sound deafening me. Missiles rained down sharply on roofs, walls and paved roadway. Lame duck though it was, the car lifted itself and sped at a touch of the accelerator pedal. I heard some of the other shells explode, but was well out of harm's way by the time they arrived.

On the 28th of April the Division was moved back to a bivouac in the woods that lined the Poperinghe—Proven road, the main highway to Dunkirk.

Late in the afternoon, after a splendid day of lying in the sun, which was greatly appreciated by the whole Division, billets to the westward were assigned to us, and we trekked off without delay.

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.