We left Valenciennes on the morning of January 12th. By great luck, an officer from the First Army, who knew every inch of the ground to be traversed, was with us, in addition to the officer from G.H.Q., who, as is always the case with Army visitors, accompanied us most courteously and efficiently throughout. Captain X took us by a by-road through the district south of Valenciennes, where in October last year our troops were fighting a war of movement, in open country, on two fronts--to the north and to the east. There were no trenches in the desolate fields we passed through, but many shell-holes, and the banks of every road were honeycombed with shelters, dug-outs and gun-emplacements, rough defences that as the German Army retreated our men had taken over and altered to their own needs; while to the west lay the valley of the Sensée with its marshes, the scene of some of the most critical fighting of the war. From the wrecked centre of Cambrai a short run over field roads takes you to the high ground north-west of the city which witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of last autumn. I still see the jagged ruins of the little village of Abancourt--totally destroyed in two days' bombardment--standing sharp against the sky, on a ridge which looks over the Sensée valley; the shell-broken road in which the car--most complaisant of cars and most skilful of drivers!--finally stuck; and those hastily dug shelters on the road-side in one of which I suddenly noticed a soldier's coat and water-bottle lying just as they had been left two months before. There were no terrible sights now in these lonely fields as there were then, but occasionally, as with this coat, the refuse of battle took one back to the living presences that once filled these roads--the _men_, to whom Marshal Haig expresses the gratitude of a great Commander in many a simple yet moving passage of his last dispatch.