Whether it is a peculiarly machine-like working of the German mind or due to the fact that German organization is carried to such limits of mathematical precision I do not know, but the fact remains that this road was normally quite safe except between certain fixed and regular hours each evening. So I was never particularly anxious to delay the return journey of the convoy of empty motor-lorries longer than was absolutely necessary, and used to leave the danger zone as soon as we had off-loaded the rations and secured the Supply Officer’s receipt for them. On one occasion only, on the return journey, however, did we have any excitement. We were travelling in convoy along a narrow road leading from the huts up to and at right angles to the main road. Just as we came to the junction of the two a few shells landed in the adjoining field, planted with tall poles, around which twining hops grew, doubtless of the famous Popeninghe brand. A few of these were destroyed, and quantities of earth were thrown up, the shells leaving dense grey-black clouds of smoke in the air, but doing no other damage. We were only just in time, though, that day, for a few hours later a motor-cyclist dispatch rider, who had come along the same road, caught up the convoy at Hazebrouck and told me that further back the road was being heavily shelled. The saddest sight of all is just behind the line, in those roadside fields where rest the fallen. No matter to what part of the line one goes, but particularly behind Ypres—and nowhere scarcely along the whole front has the fighting been heavier than on this bit of the British line—one sees clustered together in groups here and there the little wooden crosses which mark the graves of those of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "They despised Death and have won their discharge." They are cared for now and duly registered, and as far as possible inscribed with names and dates by that excellent department, the Graves Registration Committee at General Headquarters. "Oh, Cromwell’s England, must thou yield for every inch of ground a son?" asks the poet; and these little graves will for ever remain, silent witnesses to the fact that here Death once reaped a rich harvest. _*Chapter IX*_ _*MR. THOMAS ATKINS AND THE FRENCH*_