It was getting dark, and it was my duty to go down a lane where snipers were hidden in the trees. This was just the kind of lane you know in England, and you can easily picture what it meant. Imagine leaving your machine, as I did, in a tree-lined lane at home, and going down it, knowing that there were fellows up the trees who were on the watch to pot you, and you will realise what it meant; but you will have to picture also the sides of the lane being littered, as this was, with dead and wounded men. Well, I had to go down that lane, and I went--sometimes walking, sometimes running, with the bullets whizzing round and the shells bursting. But by good luck I escaped the bullets, though a piece of shell nearly nailed me--or would have got me if I had been with my machine. The fragment struck the cycle and I picked it up and brought it home with the other things as a souvenir. That escape was practically nothing. It was a detail, and came in the day’s work; but I had a much more narrow shave a few days later. It was a Saturday and I had had a pretty hard time--amongst other things I had done a thirty-mile ride after one o’clock in the morning--the sort of ride that takes it out of you. There was one of our orderlies with a horse near me and I was standing talking to him. We heard a shrapnel shell coming, and ducked our heads instinctively to dodge it--but the shell got at us. The horse was killed and the orderly was so badly hit that he died in less than an hour. He was buried in the afternoon, and very solemn the funeral was, with the guns booming all around. I was deeply shocked at the time, but war is war, and in a very short time the incident had passed out of my mind. Our fellows told me that I was one of the lucky ones that day. That was the beginning of one of the most awful periods of the war, especially for the despatch-riders, for we were at it night and day. The roads were hopelessly bad, and as we were not allowed to carry any lamps at night the danger of rapid travel was greatly increased. We were, however, relieved to some extent by mounted men. The fighting was furious and incessant, and we were in the thick of a good deal of it. After a very hard spell I was quartered all day in a little stable, and it proved to be about the most dangerous place I had come across. On October 29th the Germans went for the stable with high explosives and the everlasting “scuttles.” For some time these big shells came and burst in the locality, and two houses within a score of yards of us were blown to pieces and enormous holes were driven in the ground.