Ypres kicking with all the strength of an iron-shod boot at the fuse of an unexploded German shell. A friend with his hands in his pockets was watching the proceedings with much interest. He said he was only wanting the fuse as a souvenir, but he would soon have got that to keep and a good deal more. The doctor was quite peevish about it, as the saying is! When an attack is being made or repelled, the concentration of batteries in action turns the country in front of them into a nightmare of noise--'a terrific and intolerable noise' in Froissart's phrase. The incessant slamming of the guns makes it impossible to hear enemy shells coming. The first intimation is their arrival. But the orderlies go backwards and forwards through it all with superb courage. Wounded trickle down the trolley line to the dressing station, and an occasional group of prisoners come through. It was on a day like this that I saw Davidson and Rainie for the last time. When The Royals were moved up from the support trenches to take over from the battalion which had delivered the attack at St. Eloi, some one said to Captain Davidson, who was going up at the head of his company through a terrible barrage, 'This is going to be a risky affair.' 'Yes,' he replied, 'but it's not our business whether it's risky or not. My orders are to go through.' Soon after he fell. He was barely twenty years of age. II _'I hate war: that is why I am fighting'_ There is a garden in Vlamertynghe with a marble seat overturned beside a smashed tree, a corner just made for lovers, once. An enormous crump hole fills the greater part of the garden, and the wall has fallen outwards in one mass leaving the fruit trees standing in a line, their arms outstretched. Across on the other side of the road Captain Norman Stewart lies buried. But his memory lives in the hearts of men, and wherever the 2nd battalion gathers round its braziers and in the glow of them the stories of the heroes of the regiment are passed on from the veterans to the younger men, Stewart will be remembered with reverence as one who not only upheld but created regimental tradition. It was a bombing affair in which he died, detachments of Suffolks, Middlesex, and Royal Scots, under his leadership, being ordered to drive the enemy out of the tip of the salient. Barricades made progress almost impossible in face of a murderous machine-gun fire. Owing to the confused nature of the fighting no quarter could be given, and desperate fighting ensued with bombs, bayonets and hand to hand. Finally ten yards were gained and the ground consolidated.