There was the tap-tap-tap of a German machine-gun somewhere on the right of the square. As I walked forward all my senses were alert to the menace of death. It would be foolish, I thought, to be killed at the end of the war--for surely the end was very near? And then I had a sudden sharp thought that perhaps it would be well if this happened. Why should I live when so many had died? The awful job was done, and my small part in it. I had seen it through from start to finish, for it was finished but for a few days of waiting. It might be better to end with it, for all that came afterwards would be anticlimax. I remember raising my head and looking squarely round at that staccato hammering of the German machine-gun, with an intense desire that a bullet might come my way. But I went on untouched into the town.... As in Courtrai, a fury of gun-fire overhead kept the people in their houses. Our field batteries were firing over the city and the enemy was answering. Here and there I saw a face peering out of a broken window, and then a door opened, and a man and woman appeared behind it with two thin children. The woman thrust out a skinny hand and grasped mine, and began to weep. She talked passionately, with a strange mingling of rage and grief. “Oh, my God!” she said, “those devils have gone at last! What have they not made us suffer! My husband and I had four little houses--we were innkeepers--and last night they sent us to this part of the town and burnt all of them.” She used a queer word in French. “Last night,” she said, “they made a devil’s _charivari_ and set many houses on fire.” Her husband spoke to me over his wife’s shoulder. “Sir, they have stolen everything, broken everything, ground us down for four years. They are bandits and robbers.” “We are hungry,” said the thin girl. By her side the boy, with a white pinched face, echoed her plaint. “We have eaten our bread and I am hungry.” They had some coffee left, and asked me to go inside and drink it with them, but I could not wait. The woman held my wrist tight in her skinny hands. “You will come back?” she asked. “I will try,” I said. Then she wept again and said: “We are grateful to the English soldiers. It is they who saved us.”