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I Off to the Front 1 II The Prison 26 III Enter Best-Dunkley 49 IV Millain 57 V The March 63 VI The General's Speech 77 VII The Vale of Acquin 81 VIII Back to the Salient 103 IX Bilge Trench 113 X The Ramparts 128 XI Mustard Oil 136 XII The City and the Trenches 146 XIII Relief 164 XIV Watou 168 XV The Days Before 179 XVI The Battle of Ypres 187       APPENDICES   I Murray and Allenby 227 II The Infantry at Minden 229 III General Rawlinson and Ostend 230 IV Edward III and the Order of the Garter 231 V Goldfish Château 233

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AT YPRES WITH BEST-DUNKLEY

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CHAPTER I

OFF TO THE FRONT

I had been to France before—in 1916, during the Battle of the Somme—but not as an officer; in 1916 I was a private in the Royal Fusiliers, and I had received orders to return to "Blighty" in order to proceed to an officer cadet battalion at Gailes, in Ayrshire, before I had been able to see what a front-line trench was like. So this, then, was my first experience of war—my "baptism of fire." I had seen and heard those magnificent bombardments up the line in 1916, and had gazed with awestruck admiration upon the strange horizon far away from my tents at Boulogne and Étaples, wondering what it must be like to be amongst it all, and expecting to be amongst it all in the course of a day or two; but, as I have already observed, I was recalled to England, and was not destined to be amongst it until the following summer. But now, at last, the experience, the great adventure to which I had been looking forward so long, was to be mine. I was gazetted a second-lieutenant in the 5th (Territorial) Lancashire Fusiliers on March 1, 1917; on March 26, I reported for duty with the 5th (Reserve) Lancashire Fusiliers at South Camp, Ripon, where I spent some unpleasant weeks amongst snow and mud; from Ripon the unit proceeded to Scarborough, where I rejoined it after having spent a couple of weeks in hospital, with tonsillitis, at the former place. Shortly after this, I received orders to proceed overseas, and returned to my home in Middleton Junction to spend my embarkation leave.

That leave was spent in the happy way in which all such leaves were