such-and-such a battalion with whom they were unfriends for the moment, they were blessed (or otherwise) if they could find them. Theirs was the misfortune to be the only battalion of the division available for fatigues during their sixteen days’ tour; so they supplied parties without intermission, both to the trenches round Railway Wood, and in battered Ypres in the cellars where they rested by candle-light to the accompaniment of crashing masonry and flying pavement blocks. A fatigue-party, under Lieutenant T. K. Walker, carrying Engineers’ stuff to near Railway Wood, was caught and shelled on the 24th, on the last two hundred yards or so of utterly exposed duckboards, every piece of which the enemy guns had taped to a yard. The water-logged soil made any sort of trenches here out of the question. Men slid, and staggered across the open under their loads till the shells chose to find them, or they reached Railway Wood and found some cover in the mine which was always being made there and always pumped out. Lieutenant Walker and four men were killed at once and seven men were wounded, of whom two afterwards died. It was as swift as the shelling of Headquarters at Poperinghe on the 11th; and Captain Woodhouse, the M.O., had to get forward to the wreckage under a heavy fire of shells and aerial torpedoes. With, or not far from him, went, crawled, ran or floundered the priest; for if by any means the body could be relieved, repaired or eased, so could the soul. It is true that both these men more or less respected direct orders not to expose themselves too much, but they suffered from curious lapses of memory. Then Spring came to the Salient in one swift rush, so warm and so windless that, at the end of April, when they were in rest under leafing trees at Poperinghe, it was possible to dine in shirt sleeves in the open by candle and starlight. The gentle weather even softened the edge of war for a day or two, till Ypres and the neighbourhood were vigorously shelled on the 5th May. The Battalion was then in Ypres prison and the cellars beneath it, where some unloved enthusiast had discovered that there was plenty of room for drill purposes in the main gaol-corridor, and drilled they were accordingly to the music of the bombardments. On such occasions men were sometimes seen to “budge,” _i.e._ roll their eyes in the direction of plaster and stones falling from the ceiling, for which heinous “crime” their names were justly taken.