The field which we are expecting to put the men into belonged to a miller who lived in a different area. We went to see him. He couldn’t speak English or French, so I tried him with German. While we were talking, I noticed some non-coms watching us very intently and was not surprised to find one following us back down the road. When he saw our car he came up and apologized for having taken us for spies. They are looking for two Germans in our lines wearing British uniforms, who have given several gun positions away. Two days ago the enemy shelled the road systematically on both sides for half a mile when an ammunition column was due. It was quite dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells, very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man’s Land. The enemy has a very good kind which remains alight for several minutes. Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are working hard, it is miserable here,—wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes, smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a poor, wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium, where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient. Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened shell-riddled town and knocked up an _estaminet_; we got a much finer meal than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. “Oh, no! I sleep upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at night. Then I go into the cellar.” This woman was a very pleasant, intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally leave the danger zone. Marching through the sloughed-up mud, through shell holes filled with putrid water, amongst most depressing conditions, I saw a working party returning to their billets. They were wet through and wrapped up with scarves, wool helmets, and gloves. Over their clothes was a veneer of plastered mud. They marched along at a slow swing and in a mournful way sang— “Left—Left—Left We—are—the tough Guys!” Apparently there are no more words to this song because after a pause of a few beats they commenced again— “Left—Left—Left—” They looked exactly what they said they were. Windmills, of which there are a good many, are only allowed to work under observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also used in the same way. I saw a pathetic sight to-day. A stretcher came by with a man painfully wounded; he was inclined to whimper; one of the stretcher-bearers said quietly to him, “Be British.” He immediately straightened himself out and asked for a “fag.” He died that night. -------------------------------------