"To-morrow," said Lieutenant Vueghs, "we shall occupy a position on the Yser dyke. Our various posts will be ranged along a communication trench that has been made by the Engineers, but in this trench, a result of recent attacks, there are still about thirty dead men. As we come across them, we are to pick them up and place them on the parapet. The stretcher-bearers will then take them away. One more word, this trench leads into the German lines on the other side of the Yser, and comes, therefore, under the enemy's firing. You will have to stoop down, and even creep along, when the passage is too low. There must be great caution as you go along. That is all I have to say. As for the rest, I trust to you." The Lieutenant was to command the sap head, Trench No. 1. This was the most advanced of all the posts, only thirty yards away from the Boches. I was to be there too, and Sergeant Deltenre with about ten men. What would be the outcome, we wondered? At any rate, it would be something fresh, and we were delighted at this. The summer twilight came very gradually. The soldiers lined up, with their heavy knapsacks on their backs, and their wallets containing provisions for two days. "Right! Four in a line! March!" and quite tranquilly, the Company filed by in a long column, crossing the meadows and the fields of sweet-scented horse-beans. We went along humming and singing. Half-way, we had the usual halt and rest. The soldiers lying in the fields, in the dusk, gave a picturesque note to the scene. The purple-tinted clouds of the beautiful sunset of Flanders gradually took a pinky shade. In front of us, towards the east, was the horribly mutilated steeple of the Oostkerke Church, standing out, with extraordinary clearness, against the great red disc of the moon, which was just rising. And in the background could already be seen mysterious stars flashing forth from the earth. These were the brilliant and ephemeral enemy fuses. Everything else was absolutely calm. From time to time, a cricket replied to another cricket. A cool wind swept over us and, from the various groups, here and there, melancholy refrains lulled us and made us dreamy. Our officers appeared to be enjoying the poetry of it all, for they gave us a rather longer halt than the time fixed. "Laugh and sing," they perhaps thought, "be gay and joyful, a little later on, we shall, perhaps, bring back with us, the glorious remains of one or other of your comrades, now singing there!" On the Yser plains, there are probably places destined for many of us. Heaven knows that we all value life, and yet these thoughts do not make us sad and, thanks to a force of character which we never suspected, there is more liveliness and sincere gaiety to be found among the simple soldiers than anywhere else.