Yet most of them had the luck to come out alive that time, and over a midday mess in a Flemish farmhouse they had hearty appetites for bully beef and fried potatoes, washed down by thin red wine and strong black coffee.

Round Ypres, and up by Boesinghe and Hooge⁠—you remember Hooge?⁠—the 14th, 20th, and 6th Divisions took turns in wet ditches and in shell-holes, with heavy crumps falling fast and roaring before they burst like devils of hell. On one day there were three hundred casualties in one battalion The German gunfire lengthened, and men were killed on their way out to “rest”⁠—camps to the left of the road between Poperinghe and Vlamertinghe.