On arriving at West Street, we halted and dismounted in front of the house of the Notary, M. Baert. This house was empty. We left our horses in charge of the Trumpeter and continued our way on foot, through Dixmude, towards Keiserhoek. The town was awful to behold; the streets were absolutely deserted and full of _debris_ of all kinds and of shell-holes. The houses were shattered, the walls cracked, the tiles in fragments, and the window-panes broken. In the street leading to Keyem, we noticed enormous splashes of blood. It was no use trying to find which side of the street was more sheltered. We were walking in the very centre of the firing line.[11] Suddenly, on a window ledge, we caught sight of Max, a young Malines collie, which our soldiers had adopted at Boom and which had gone with us on one waggon or another everywhere. The poor dog was trembling now with fear. We took him away with us and continued our way. A waggon came back with half of its team. The whole road was being swept with shrapnels and it was impossible to keep straight on. We turned to the right by the Handzaem canal and endeavoured to find Lieutenant-Colonel van Rolleghem, who was in command of the 12th Line Regiment. Thanks to the trees along the canal bank, we reached the trenches. The Colonel was not there. We were advised to try the other side of the canal. A boat was at hand and we crossed, under the sharp whizzing of shrapnels. The Colonel was at the extreme end of the winding line of the Blood Putteken trenches. It was impossible to employ the 42nd Battery there. The 40th, which had been able to put only two of its cannons on the battery in an orchard to our right, had not been able to stay at Keiserhoek.[10]It had two of its horses killed and would have lost a cannon if it had not been for the self-sacrifice of Quartermaster Vivier. The trenches were being shelled. Thanks to wrong observation, the German firing was concentrated on a line of willows, the indistinct outline of which appeared to be a hundred yards away from the retrenchments. Orders were given to us to return to Kapelhoek. We had to go once more into the Dixmude hell. Just as we reached the big Square, a big shell of 21 centimetres fell twenty yards away, at the corner of West Street, filling the whole street with opaque grey smoke. We ran through this to the middle of a heap of stones, bricks, and beams. Another projectile entered by the air-hole of a house and killed the band of the 12th Line Regiment which had taken refuge in a cellar. In the meantime, the 41st Battery, returning from Eessen, joined us and the three batteries crossed the bridge over the Yser, arriving at a trot at Kapelhoek. They opened a violent fire on the ground to the south of the cemetery, and the Boches were obliged to clear out. That evening we entered a farm-house, and found five beds in a state which proved that there had been a hasty flight from there. We jumped into the beds just as we were.