"A and B Companies had a very lively time at dinner this 'X' evening. West was acting the fool and making us all laugh. "At 9.30 p.m. the Battalion left Query Camp and we marched to our concentration trenches beyond Vlamertinghe. The men filed into these trenches--5 and 8 platoons in the same trench. Battalion Headquarters are at Cafe Belge on the left of the main road. B Company Headquarters are in the cellar of the next cottage on the left. About a hundred yards further on--on the left of the road--is the trench my (8) platoon is in. The organization of my platoon is as follows: Sergeant Baldwin is platoon sergeant, and Corporal Livesey is next in seniority after him. I have five sections. The Bombing Section, under Livesey, consists of eight all told; Tipping's Riflemen, thirteen; Heap's Rifle-Grenade men, eleven; two Lewis Gun Sections--Topping and Hopkinson being the respective section commanders and each having seven in their sections. "Various articles were drawn from a dump when we got to the trench. We got to the trench about 11 p.m." There my diary of the period abruptly closes. For the events which followed it is necessary to turn to the long letter describing the whole operations which I wrote home from Worsley Hall a few days later. That letter describes the Third Battle of Ypres which is the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER XVI THE BATTLE OF YPRES (July 31st, 1917) "'Tis Zero! Full of all the thoughts of years! A moment pregnant with a life-time's fears That rise to jeer and laugh, and mock awhile The vaunted courage of the human frame, Till Duty calls, till Love and beck'ning Fame Lead forth the heroes to that frenzied line. The creeping death that, searching, never stays; To brave the rattling, hissing streams of lead, The bursting shrapnel and the million ways That war entices death; when dying, dead And living, mingle in the ghastly glare That taints the beauty of a night once fair, And seems to flout the Majesty divine." F. SHUKER (_Zero_). Safely ensconced beneath the sheets of a very comfortable hospital bed at Worsley Hall, I wrote the following letter in which I described the Third Battle of Ypres up to the time when I left the battlefield. For the progress of the battle beyond that it will be necessary to quote other documents. Here is my own account of the operations written on August 3: