Before we had traversed much of the way from our headquarters, west of Ypres, we were in a bad shell-zone. On the narrow road, ammunition limbers went up at a trot and returned at full gallop. The route was lined with red-bandaged wounded struggling rearward as best they could, and ambulances were always in evidence. As we turned a corner a Black Maria exploded with a fearful bang fifty yards ahead, right beside the roadway. A small piece of the shell hit General Meakin in the head, but luckily was so spent it did not cause a wound. As we neared the canal blue ruin was spread everywhere. Battery on battery of our artillery, firing like mad, barked and roared from the fields at our sides, while Hun shells fell close and fast around them. A car dashed towards us, the chauffeur holding up his hand to stop us. It was "Babe" Nicholson's car, empty except for the driver, whom Nicholson had told to "look out for himself," while "Babe" was showing the way trenchwards to a depleted battalion of York and Durham Territorials sent forward as reserve. Only 380 of their 1,000 remained from the fortnight's fighting and sixteen of their officers had been killed or wounded, but they trudged up as if arriving fresh from home. "Stop, sir," said the scared chauffeur. "They are shelling the road beyond so heavily no one can get through." "Did you just come through?" asked Hardress Lloyd. "Yes," replied the boy; "but a couple almost lit on me. One of them blew the car into the hedge." "Go ahead, President," said Lloyd grimly. "We have got to get there somehow." We got there, somehow. Once we ran through the ill-smelling shell-cloud of a coal-box that burst a few yards in front of us, and twigs from the trees fell over the car as the shells screamed above, but we dodged on, past shell-holes and around barricades, untouched. Pulling up, I saw Nicholson's car behind us, the driver grinning. "I thought if it was good enough for you it was good enough for me," he said. "But I'm hanged if I thought _anyone_ could get over that road and not be hit. It's the first time I've been up here." I introduced him to my tiny Potijze dug-out, which he thought "smelled horrid." He was inclined to a preference for the open air until a great howitzer-shell lit fifty feet away, pieces from it knocking over some of the wall of the ruined house behind which the dug-out had been made. As he joined me in the cramped space below ground another Black Maria burst across the road from us, making the earth tremble and showering splinters on the roof of our shelter. Fortunately for those whose work took them over the roads that morning the sky was leaden and rain fell at intervals, rendering German aeroplane observation impossible. Had a Hun airman caught sight of the traffic-filled road over which we had come the enemy gunners might have effectually closed it to traffic.