On the afternoon of the 18th of October General Coffin's headquarters were established in Lendelede, a town of upwards of four thousand inhabitants. Here the Germans had left behind perhaps the most valuable gift they could at this juncture have bestowed--excellent baths, where three hundred men could be bathed within an hour. Accommodation generally was now very good in a country so thickly populated, but there were still some unpleasant surprises. One such was the discovery by one unit, that in an excellent stable, recommended to it by a civilian, there was in each of ten stalls a dead horse, killed a week earlier by a single burst of Belgian shrapnel. That evening the relief of the 3rd Belgian Division, along the left bank of the Lys, from Bavichove to the point of junction between the river and the Canal de Roulers à la Lys, was carried out by the 109th Brigade. Heavy bombing of the roads by enemy aeroplanes made it an affair of great difficulty. A French Division, the 164th, was coming in on the left of the 36th, but there was no prospect of its being ready to cross till the night of the 20th. As every moment was of importance, the 36th Division had orders to effect a passage more than twenty-four hours earlier. General Coffin's scheme was in itself a scathing commentary upon the decadence of German moral. It was one which would not have been contemplated in the heroic age of the German infantry. In those days an isolated battalion, pushed across to form a bridgehead, would have been flung back into the river almost before it had had time to draw breath. But times had changed, and methods changed with them. Extreme boldness now paid as it had never paid in the previous course of the war. With adequate artillery support great risks could be taken, for the German machine-gunners frequently left their positions under heavy shell-fire. Moreover, there were no more "pill-boxes."