The Rider is a work of the greatest interest. It may be considered as a small museum concerning the trench warfare. In the minimum space it utilized in a most judicious way all defensive and offensive implement such as accessory defences and all kinds of liaison systems, which were coordinated to bring the highest efficiency. It was also the witness of the magnificent and sustained stoïcism on the part numerous Belgian soldiers who succeeded each other to defend it. The Death Trench is a sacred spot, sacred by the acts of courage and heroism that were accomplished there, and sacred by the blood that was shed here, it is the tomb of hundreds of brave heroes. 14.—Company commander’s post near the Yserdam, at Dixmude, in front of the canal of Handzaeme (leftbank). 16.—Concrete dug-out south of the railway bridge at Dixmude (left bank). These two shelters mark out the portion of the Belgian front which suffered the most by German bombardment with trench-mortars shells and bombs. During the dreadful days of May 1916, our first line, facing Dixmude was subjected to awful firing; the embankment of the Yser, behind which our men were sheltered, was overthrown, the shelters broken down, the relief posts destroyed. All the work of the trenches which had taken eighteen months of patient toil to erect was annihilated in a few days and transformed into a horrible chaos. Hundreds of brave soldiers were torn to pieces by the bursting of German trench mortar shells, the effects of which were so terrible that in falling they dug craters of 10 meters diameter, thus smashing up the strongest shelters, and crushing and burying under the ruins all those who had taken refuge there. After the storm calmed down (and it was only calmed when our mortars arrived, affording us then the opportunity to juggle with those of the adversary), the Belgian soldiers with their habitual tenacity, undertook to rebuild their defensive works. Night and day, they worked patiently and obstinately on, and in the face of the enemy which was watching them from the opposite side of the bank, managed ruins out of the ruins that were accumulated there, to erect new lines of defence, stronger and better established than the first. They were composed, besides firing parapets for infantrymen, of numerous shelters for snipers and machine-gunners, rest and waiting shelters, relief posts, fighting battle posts for unit commanders, etc.... Earth, wood, iron, concrete, all were put together and used to constitute a formidable entrenched line, which was held till the end of the war.