While we were around Ypres, waiting for the Germans to come and break through, we heard a good deal, indirectly, of what was going to happen to us and to England. The Germans had all sorts of monster guns, and with these they were going to bombard England across the narrow Channel when they got to the French coast, and they were going to work all sorts of miracles with their airships and aeroplanes. We soon heard, too, that the Kaiser himself was in the field; but the only effect of that information was to make us more keen to show what we could do. Truth to tell, we were far from being impressed by the presence of either the Kaiser or his vaunted Guards. We were in the best of spirits, and had a sublime belief in Sir John French and all his staff and our own officers. It was on October 31st--which has been called _the_ decisive day of the fight for Ypres, and which was certainly a most terrible day in every way--that the Seventh Division was ordered to attack the German position. The weather was very fine, clear and sunny, and our spirits were in keeping with it. We were thankful to be on the move, because we had had nearly three weeks in the trenches, and had been billeted in all sorts of queer places--above and below ground--under an everlasting shell fire, which became unendurable and was thoroughly nerve-destroying. We knew what a desperate business the advance would be, because the Germans greatly outnumbered us, and they had planted vast numbers of guns. They had immense bodies of men in trenches, and in a large number of the houses and buildings which commanded the ground over which we had to advance they had placed machine-guns, with their villainous muzzles directed on us from bedroom windows and holes which had been knocked in walls. From start to finish the advance was a terrible business--far more terrible than any words of mine can make you realise. The whole Division was on the move, stretching along a big tract of country; but of course no man could see much of what was happening, except in his own immediate locality. Neither had he much chance of thinking about anything or anybody except himself, and then only in a numbed sort of way, because of the appalling din of the artillery on both sides, the crash of the guns and the explosions of the shells, with the ceaseless rattle of the rifles and the machine-guns.