Imagine a little tiled room, some 16 feet by 9, in which for over a
fortnight passing soldiers have been living, sleeping, and eating;
imagine the furniture overturned, the broken crockery strewn on the
floor, the doors and drawers of the cupboards pulled out, their modest
contents scattered to the four corners of the house; add to this
windows without glass, doors broken in, rubbish of every kind lying
about, brought no one can tell whence or how; and yet note that one or
two chromo-lithographs, a few photographs of friends and relatives and
certain familiar objects, still cling to the walls, evoking the life
that animated this home but a short time ago, and you will get some
idea of the place where my Major, my comrades of the squadron and I
were lodged on that memorable November evening.

It was five o'clock, and night was already falling, the cold, damp,
misty night of Flanders following on a dreary autumn day. Outside the
guns were roaring far away. The Battle of the Yser was going on.

Our regiment had just been brought by rail from the Reims district,
where it was, to the North of France, and thence to Belgium. Our
chiefs had said: "You must leave your horses, you must forget that you
ever were cavalrymen, you must make up your minds cheerfully to your
new calling and become infantrymen for the time being. We are short of
infantry here, and the Germans are trying to rush Dunkirk and Calais.
Your country relies upon you to stop them." Our good Chasseurs left
their horses at Elverdinghe, 10 kilometres from here. They came on
foot, hampered by their heavy cavalry cloaks, dragging their riding
boots through the atrocious mud of the ruined roads, carrying in their
packs, together with their ration of bread and tinned meat, the huge
load of one hundred and twenty cartridges; they arrived here in the
firing line, and quite simply, as if they had never been accustomed to