we replaced them in Brigade Support--Battalion Headquarters, "B" and "C"
Companies in the "Lake" dug-outs, "A" and "D" Companies in the Barracks
of Ypres.

During the next six days we were worked harder than we had been worked
before, digging, carrying, and trench revetting. Fortunately both halves
of the Battalion had fairly comfortable quarters to which to return
after work was over, though those in Ypres lived a somewhat noisy life.
The barracks were close to the centre of the town, and each day the
Boche fired his 17 in. Howitzer from dawn to dusk, mostly at the
Cathedral and Cloth Hall, with occasional pauses to shoot at the Ecole
de Bienfaisance, just outside the Menin gate. The shell, arriving with
great regularity every 15 minutes, was generally known as the "Ypres
express," for it arrived with the most terrifying roar, buried itself
deep in the ground before exploding, and then made an enormous crater.
As it burst, not only did every house shake, but the whole street seemed
to lift a few feet in the air and settle down again. In the barracks we
had bricks and falling débris from the Cloth Hall, but nothing more, and
these slight disadvantages were easily outweighed by the comfort in
which we lived. Every man had a bed, and, as the barracks' water supply
was still in working order, we all had baths. A piano was borrowed from
the Artillery, and provided us with an excellent concert, which was held
in one of the larger rooms, and helped us to forget the war for a time,
in spite of a 40-foot crater in the Barrack Square, and the ever-present
possibility that another would arrive. Incidentally, the piano became
later a cause of much trouble to us, for the police refused to allow us
to move it through the streets without a permit from the Town Major; the
Town Major would have nothing to do with the matter, having only just
arrived in place of his predecessor, who had given us permission to
have the piano, and had then been wounded (Town Majors never lasted