We had left the farmhouse and gone into a large château, which served as headquarters, and here, on November 2nd, we had a ghastly experience. It is likely that the Germans knew the particular purpose to which the château had been devoted; at any rate they shelled it mercilessly, and no fewer than six staff officers were killed, while a considerable number were wounded. Again I was lucky, and came out of the adventure unscathed. On the following day, however, I was nearly caught. I had taken a message to headquarters and was putting my machine on a stand. To do this I had to leave a house, and go about fifty yards away, to the stand. I had scarcely left the building when two shells struck it fair and plump, and killed two motor cyclists and wounded three others. Like a flash I jumped into a ditch, and as I did so I heard the bits of burst shell falling all around me. When I got out of the ditch and went back along the main road I saw a huge hole which a shell had made. It was a thrilling enough escape, and shook me at the time, because I knew the two poor fellows who were killed. That was the kind of thing we went through as we jogged along from day to day. I am not, of course, giving a story of the war so much as trying to show what it means to be a motor cycle despatch-rider at the front. He is here, there and everywhere--and there is no speed limit. He is not in the actual firing line, yet he sees a great deal of what is going on. Sometimes he is very lucky, as I was myself one day, in being allowed to witness a fight that was taking place. I had taken a despatch to an officer, and perhaps conveyed some cheering news. Anyway, I had the chance to go to an eminence from which I could view the battle, and I went, and it was wonderful to see the waging of the contest over a vast tract of country--for in a war like this the ordinary fighter sees very little indeed of the battle. At this special point I had the rare chance of witnessing a fight as I suppose it is seen by the headquarters staff, and one of the strangest things about it was the little there was to be seen. There were puffs of smoke and tongues of flame--and the everlasting boom of guns; but not much more. Men are killed at long distances and out of sight in these days.