The 6th Brigade held the line from the railway to the Bellewarde Lake, the 3rd Dragoons on the left, the North Somerset Yeomanry on the right, and the 1st Royal Dragoons (Royals) in reserve a bit to the rear, and but a few yards north of the Menin road. The 8th Brigade, in reserve, was composed of the Royal Horse Guards (Blues), the 10th Hussars, and the Essex Yeomanry. Each cavalry regiment had a fighting strength of about 300 men. The 1st Division numbered some 2,400 rifles, and the 3rd Division roughly 2,700, say, just over 5,000 men for the two Divisions. An extra number of machine-guns made up for their comparatively small numerical strength. The trench-line into which the troopers were thrown that night was in poor condition for defence. A foot of mud was the average bottom, and further attempts at digging only resulted in more water and mud. Parapets of sandbags and wire entanglements were sadly needed all along the line, and, at that, sandbag parapets were all too easily demolished by Hun shell-fire, which made short work of them. A careful reconnaissance of the 3rd Cavalry Division trenches failed to reveal a stretch of 100 yards where more sandbags and more wire were not urgently required. CHAPTER VI. Dawn on the 13th of May was the signal for a howitzer bombardment of the cavalry front which surpassed in intensity and duration any previous gun-fire during the whole War. From four o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon it drifted from one section to another, without respite. During the entire forenoon the trench line north and south of the Zonnebeke Road, viewed from Potijze, a thousand yards to the rear, was covered continuously with a heavy pall of smoke, as if a well-fed conflagration was raging beneath. The flashes of bursting shells in that smoke-cloud were so numerous that no human eye could follow or count them, even in a most restricted range of vision. The sound was one grand, incessant roar. All the thunderstorms of time, crashing in splendid unison, would not have made a more magnificent din. The ear could not intelligibly record so tempestuous a maelstrom of sound-waves, and the brains of those in the midst of its wildest fury became numb and indifferent to the saturnalia of explosion, save for one here and there which lost its mental balance, perhaps never to be regained. Early in the morning General de Lisle sent me to Potijze with Captain Hardress Lloyd. General Meakin rode up with us on his first visit to the Salient since his return from sick leave. Ypres was impassable. We took a round-about course to the north, now dashing down a muddy lane, now over a turnip field where constantly passing traffic had worn a sort of path, over an improvised bridge across the canal, at last reaching the Ypres-St. Jean Road that led away to Wieltje and St. Julien. By a cross road of sorts we found our way to Potijze, thankful to have arrived safely.