That night a bombing party "cleared out" the district near that transept, and made the snipers' point of vantage untenable. Each night a splendid pyrotechnic display showed the curved outlines of the Salient. The German trench lights were far superior to ours. Each night, too, Ypres was full of French or British lines of soldiers marching on in the dark to relieve some of their fellows in the trenches outside the town. The ruins of the Cloth Hall, and of the St. Martin Cathedral by it, formed interesting studies for my camera. The fine mural paintings on the walls of the roofless Grand Gallery in the Cloth Hall were crumbling to bits. My photographs were the last records made of them, for they fell piece by piece not long afterward. I watched operations at a French Divisional Headquarters one evening. It was not more than a mile back of the line. Wagons were loading, preparatory to being taken trenchwards at dusk. Timber, thousands on thousands of empty bags, rolls of barbed wire, odd shaped completed wire entanglements, metal shields varying from curved sheet-steel bastions a dozen feet in length to small V-shaped iron castings, all manner of wooden troughs, boxes, stands, supports, periscopes, braziers, rolls of fine wire, boxes of trench bombs and grenades, shovels, picks, and many peculiar tools were among the collection of material that was to find its way to the firing line. I learnt much of the business side of trench warfare that night. The supply of ammunition and food and its distribution are most methodically managed by the French. Taking up giant powder for mining operation was an item of the day's work. A story was told by one of our sappers, of a couple of Irish troopers who had started across the fields in front of Zillebeke as night was falling, with a good sized load of powder in a box. Shortly after they left Cavan's House shells fell in profusion over the route that they had chosen. Another group started trenchward, carrying various types of grenades. Howitzer shells were falling, front and rear, and shrapnel bursting a few hundred yards away. A flash and a crash came from in front. "Them fellers with the joynt powder was like to be in that shindy," said a member of the second party. "Close to 'em, it was, sure." A moment later they came upon a strange sight. There in the field, just visible in the gathering darkness, sat the box. Behind it reclined the two troopers, snuggling close for cover. "What are you doin' in this 'ere peaceful spot, Dan?" questioned one of the second party as they reached the box. "Takin' cover the whiles we do a bit of a rest-like," was the reply. "The divils sent wan so clost, it shure jarred the wind out av us, it did." And they snuggled closer to the giant powder as he spoke.