Laventie where we’d come from, in front of Red House and all!”) The last day of March brought them for one breathless half-hour the heaviest shelling they had yet undergone; but it ended, as so many such outbursts did, in nothing but a few slight wounds, and a searching of the Menin road by night with big stuff that roared and rattled on what remained of the tortured stones. One could always know when Ypres city had been shelled afresh, by the pools of blood on the pavé in the raw morning or some yet undisposed-of horse which told that the night-hawking processions of the transport had caught it once again. Their daily lives in the front and reserve line were dark, confined, and unsavoury. One officer was ill-advised enough to pry into the vitals of his dug-out. (“When I arrived, it did not look so bad, as the floor was covered with sand-bags as usual.”) A strong-stomached orderly turned in to remove a few. He found no less than six layers of them, progressively decaying; then floor-boards of a fabulous antiquity, and last the original slime of ’14’s corruption. It was neglectful, but men who may be blown out of this life any hour of the twenty-four do not devote themselves to the continuities of house-cleaning. In Ypres city that spring not one single building was habitable, though many of them still retained the shapes of human dwellings. The Battalion messes were all underground in cellars, a couple of which, with a hole knocked through the dividing walls, make a good anteroom; but their sole light came from a small window which also gave passage to the stove-pipe. A tired man could doze down there, in gross fuggy warmth and a brooding stillness broken only by the footsteps of small parties moving without ostentation till the triple whistle of the aeroplane-watchers sent feet scurrying loudly to cover. Those who have known of both terrains say Verdun Salient, by reason of its size, contours, and elevation was less of a permanent tax on the morale than the flatness and confinement of Ypres. One could breathe in certain spots round Verdun; look out over large horizons from others; and solid, bold features of landscape interposed between oneself and the enemy. The thickness and depth, too, of all France lay behind for support. In the Salient it was so short a distance from Calais or Boulogne that one could almost hear the Channel threatening at one’s back, and wherever wearied eyes turned, forwards or flank wise, the view was closed by low, sullen rises or swells of ground, held and used in comfort and at leisure by an established enemy.