We had lunch in Furnes with Colonel Tom Bridges. I had seen much of Bridges during the first months of the War, when he was attached to the 4th Dragoon Guards as a major. He led a charge at Tour de Paissy, on the Aisne, which saved the British line. Promoted to the rank of Colonel, he was given command of the 4th Hussars. A very few days afterwards, while on a night march, he was sent for by General Sir John French. Arriving at G.H.Q., Bridges, who had been the British Military Attaché in Belgium prior to the War and knew the Belgian Army well, was given certain instructions, placed in a Rolls-Royce car, and at once started for Antwerp. He arrived late at night, after a continuous run of over 600 kilometres, and saw King Albert, who at once convened a Council of War. Bridges then jumped into the work at hand without a moment's delay. Tom Bridges arrived in Antwerp on November 3rd. The city was evacuated by the Belgians on November 8th. Having heard so much of the prominent part Bridges had played in the affairs of the Belgians, I looked forward with all the more anticipation to again meeting him. Major Prince Alexander of Teck, attached to Colonel Bridges' mission, and Mrs. Bridges, who had recently been at work in the Duchess of Sutherland's hospital at Dunkirk, were at luncheon. Colonel Bridges talked of King Albert. "The King gives to a stranger the impression that he comes to a decision slowly. I have heard men, who have met him, say they thought him extremely deliberate, but all recognise his solid foundation of determination. But for that rock on which the King's stern determination is set, there would be but little Belgian Army left to-day. To King Albert personally much more is due than is likely ever to be known." The more I saw of the Belgian Army along the Yser, the more I appreciated what Bridges had said of the King. After luncheon, I drove General de Lisle, Colonel Bridges and Hardress Lloyd to Nieuport-les-Bains, once a sea-coast summer resort at the mouth of the Yser. The Allied trench line was roughly the line of the canal. On the coast in the sandy dunes, the Allies' trenches had been pushed a bit to the Ostend side, but Dixmude was still in German hands. Not a single inhabitant of Nieuport-les-Bains was in the town--not a man, woman or child. The French Tirailleurs d'Afrique, part of a splendid division of French Colonials that had been sent by Foch to "stiffen" that part of the line, occupied the ruins of the summer resort that was. The typical French summer hotels in Nieuport-les-Bains were, for the most part, shapeless piles of _débris_. The Huns never succeeded in actually penetrating the town, though Von Beseler's troops tried hard to take it. The Germans reached the river bank which formed the town's boundary on the north.