They were sad runs these, up to the trenches, where every village through which the convoy passed was suffering more from the devastating effects of shell fire than the last. Every day almost one would notice a change; another church tower a little more damaged, or a house that yesterday was proudly standing and a landmark is a victim to German artillery and a ruined mass to-day. Fewer and fewer buildings left standing, not a piece of glass remaining in any single window frame; the bare walls, perhaps, of a house here and there still standing, but bespattered with shrapnel bullets. The further up one got, the fewer civilian inhabitants one saw, until the last villages, such as Vlamertinghe on the road to Ypres, which had been entirely evacuated by the civilian population, except perhaps for one or two old peasants here and there, who had possibly spent all their lives in their own particular village and intended to continue doing so, even if this entailed living a considerable part of the time in cellars. We often passed little parties of refugees making their way slowly into France, there to throw themselves on the hospitality of their more fortunate friends. Turning their backs for ever on their old homes, which they instinctively knew they had seen for the last time, a whole family, perhaps, the father leading a horse and cart piled up with such odd bits and pieces of household goods as they had managed to save, perhaps all their worldly possessions—a bed, mattress, and a few sticks of furniture—the other members of the family either riding on the cart or following in a sorrowful little procession behind it, their possessions amongst the animal world not being forgotten, but frequently represented by a goat and a few chickens. The further up one got, too, the more congested were the roads with the impedimenta of war: motor-lorries, ambulances, guns, wagons and the like. The Military Police, being stationed on point duty on the more important cross roads, with the aid of red and green flags directed the traffic, and for all the world it was often like a block of vehicular traffic at Piccadilly Circus, the usual accompaniment of language not being forgotten!