Well, what was one job more or less after all? One might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and I should go down to waggon-lines with all the clearer conscience on the 6th, and sleep.... How I would sleep! I would get down there for lunch if I could, have a quiet ride in the afternoon into “Pop,” and come back to waggon-lines for an early dinner and bed. How glorious to wake up once more, and to hear the birds twittering outside! It seemed ages ago since one had done so last, and it was in reality just eight days. My waggon-line billet was in a small farm-house. Madame and her man had been, for those parts, friendly enough. I remembered having tried to convey to Madame that next time I visited her, Ypres would be free. She had not understood, and perhaps it had been just as well. [Illustration: The Battery in action N. of the Menin Road. ] [Illustration: The Menin Road. ] [Illustration: At the waggon-lines. ] Yes, a late breakfast, after a sluice-down in the open air, a leisurely toilet, and a stroll round the horses; and then perhaps a real joy-ride, an all-day affair towards Nieppe Forest.... I rang up the battery and gave my orders for signallers and an orderly on the morrow. There was only one other subaltern available for the job, and as the Major was out at the time I deputed myself. It is the unwritten rule. I read through the standing orders for the Group liaison officers, finished my chapter of _Sonia_—I was to read the next in a very different setting—and went to sleep. The Menin Road was a populous concern in those days and the varied traffic comforted our gregarious souls as we walked down at a round pace next morning after breakfast to pay our respects _en route_ to Infantry Brigade and the senior Artillery Liaison Officer of the Group in the big labyrinth of dug-outs at the bottom of the hill. Hell Fire Corner, though still occasionally shelled “on spec,” was no longer the shunned, depressing cross-roads that it used to be. Now it even boasted a military policeman to control the traffic. Ambulance cars and heavy lorries passed and met us. The road was thick with infantry and fatigue-parties of various kinds going up and coming out. The shattered boughs and fallen branches, which had blocked the unused road before, had now been side-tracked; only dead mules and horses here and there had created fresh obstructions. Fritz was putting most of his metal this morning on to the front line and the ridge where we were due at noon; but even back here he had guns enough to send over his one a minute, searching—now that he might no longer observe—for some of his old favourite spots. So we did not loiter. At Infantry Brigade they were making their toilet. The senior Liaison Officer told me that battalion had shifted its headquarters during the night: “too hot to stay where it was.” He gave me what he understood were the map co-ordinates of their new abode, and I took my departure.