Captain Vigoureux had sent me to lay out the camp with a corporal and one man. Clère, Hénon and I went on ahead at a sharp pace. From Coxyde to Ostdinkerque there was no trace of bombardment. On the road we met several lots of horses at exercise, some waggons, many soldiers and a few civilians. At Ostdinkerque a mill, two houses and a part of the church had been gutted yesterday. Some vehicles contained civilians, who were prudently clearing out. From this place onwards (Nieuport-Ville was six kilomètres off) the road became more and more deserted and the noise of the guns became louder. At first we only heard the noise of our own batteries and the shell burst a long way off. Two kilomètres from Nieuport I heard the whistle of the first German shell, a shrapnel which burst some hundreds of mètres off. Several people on the road were peppered with the fragments of shell; the telegraph wires were broken and the rails of a tramway were torn up. The country was a desert, and the eye saw nothing but sand-dunes without end, and here our underground life began. At the entrance to the town a prudent man on duty showed his profile at the door of a cellar. I asked him, “Where is Captain Mahot?” and he answered in an irritated voice: “Don’t stand there in the middle of the road, don’t you see that the shells are falling just where you are?” I had not noticed it, but I did not take long to find out. The man on duty led me five mètres underground to Lieutenant Deporte. “Sir, where is Captain Mahot? The town commandant of the 16th Dragoons? I see no one about.” “Everyone has gone to earth,” he replied, placidly filling his pipe, “and I advise you to hurry up and do likewise, for it comes down like hail just about now.” It did indeed. I heard the most disquieting sounds, the bursting of big shells, the splash of bullets, which flattened themselves against the houses. Some streets were enfiladed, and thousands of shrapnel bullets flew back and forward between the German trenches and ours. The Lieutenant gave me a man to take me to the Captain’s cellar, which was at the other end of the town. He and I (I had left the others in a cellar) skirted the walls, and at every step what a sight! All that remained of the church resembled a sort of historic ruin—some pillars, some arches, very fine ones, and some sculptures lying on the ground. Everywhere the craters of the big shells had the dimensions of dried-up ponds. In the principal _place_ there were two such, in which one could have put two houses.