We got on the move, and when night came it was awful to see the whole countryside lit up with the flames of burning buildings--farms and houses and other places which had been set on fire by the Germans. There was a farm which was blazing furiously and I shall never forget it, for the good reason that in marching we managed to circle it three times before we could get properly on the march and go ahead. We pushed on to Cambrai, where the cannonading was truly terrible. My company was in support of another company in advance. We lay behind a bank, sheltering, for a few hours. At the back of us was a British howitzer battery, in a bit of a wood, so that we were between two awful fires. It was indescribable--the deafening din, which never ceased or lessened while the duel raged, the excitement, the danger, and the nerve-strain; yet there was something fascinating in watching the firing and wondering what was going to happen. It is wonderful to think of the working of the human mind at such a time, and strange to recall the odd things one does. In our own case, as we had to go on sheltering and watching, we amused ourselves by counting the number of shells that dropped within a certain area which was well under our observation. The area was, roughly speaking, about 200 yards square, and in three-quarters of an hour no fewer than seventy-six shells exploded over that particular spot. They were shrapnel and high explosive and never struck the ground--they burst in the air, and at one time I counted six shells bursting in the air together. That gives you some idea of the tremendous nature of the German shell fire. Luckily a great number of the shells did not explode at all, or few if any of us could have got away. It is impossible to praise too highly the British artillery’s work. To my own personal knowledge there was one battery that day--I don’t know which it was--which was under fire for at least seven hours continuously without shifting; and during the whole of that time they were replying to the German guns. After that shattering experience we camped in a cornfield at night, and were settling down to sleep when were we ordered to move again. For hours, worn and weary though we were, we were on the march, and thankful we were when we halted in a village and got a box of biscuits from the French as a midday snack. We had been forced to part with most of our equipment and many of the greatcoats were thrown away; but I felt that I should want mine and I stuck to it--and I am wearing it now. It has had plenty of rough usage--and here are the holes made by a piece of flying shrapnel.