"The following morning, the 5th of October, we were to be four or five hundred yards to the east of the bridge, in order to let our Artillery shoot over Schoonaerde. Just at this point, the Escaut makes a slight concave bend towards the north, that is on our side. I was, therefore, afraid of two things. First, there was the danger that the Germans, covered by their own Artillery, might cross the bridge without our seeing them, as we were rather far from it ourselves. Then I feared that we might be surprised from behind, on account of the turn in the Escaut, as Boche sentinels were visible on a sort of cupola, at the top of a German manufactory near the Schoonaerde station, a manufactory which we had not been allowed to destroy by fire the week before. Towards 6.30, I went to the bridge, after telling my men to hide in the small trenches we had made during the night in the embankment of the Escaut. On arriving as far as the church, I heard the roar of cannon. I had a pang at my heart, dreading lest the target should be my poor Squadron. Two minutes later, a formidable storm burst over our wretched little trenches, and this storm continued for half an hour. "'Not a single man will be left,' I said to myself, as the projectiles passed, one after another, twenty yards in front of me, with an infernal noise. The whizzing of the shrapnels and the roar of the shells were frightful. The air seemed to be torn by them and the commotion was terrible." The following is an episode of what took place in the trenches, according to a letter from Lieutenant de Burlet, which I received a few days later. "At Schoonaerde, I lost seven men of my platoon. One of them was a sub-officer and another my poor orderly, whom you saw by me in the trench. A shrapnel burst two yards away from us, taking off my poor Tuitinier's face. I took refuge under his dead body from 6.30 to 7.45 when, after escaping a thousand dangers and feeling all the revulsions of the body which was protecting me, each time it was hit by the splinters from the shells, I beat a retreat on hearing your whistle." "At about 7.30," continues Commander Cartuyvels, "the firing ceased. I left my shelter and heard German being spoken on the other side of the water. Piff! paff!... A ball had hit me in the chest, but by a miracle had been turned aside by a pocket-knife. A second hit me in the left knee.