two soldiers came, and finding a boat rowed noisily round the tiny lake,
and the shells murmured harshly as they flew across to Ypres. Some ruins
are dead stones, but the broken houses of Flanders are pitifully
alive--like the wounded men who lie between the trenches and cannot be
saved....

Half a mile south from Dickebusch are cross-roads, and the sign-post
tells you that the road to the left is the road to Wytschaete--but
Wytschaete faces Kemmel and Messines faces Wulverghem.

I was once walking over the hills above Witzenhausen,--the cherries by
the roadside were wonderful that year,--and coming into a valley we
asked a man how we might best strike a path into the next valley over
the shoulder of the hill. He said he did not know, because he had never
been over the hill. The people of the next valley were strangers to him.
When first I came to a sign-post that told me how to get to a village I
could not reach with my life, I thought of those hills above
Witzenhausen. From Wulverghem to Messines is exactly two kilometres. It
is ludicrous.

Again, one afternoon I was riding over the pass between Mont Noir and
Mont Vidaigne. I looked to the east and saw in the distance the smoke of
a train, just as from Harrow you might see the Scottish Express on the
North-Western main line. For a moment I did not realise that the train
was German, that the purpose of its journey was to kill me and my
fellow-men. But it is too easy to sentimentalise, to labour the stark
fact that war is a grotesque, irrational absurdity....

Following the main road south from Dickebusch you cross the frontier and
come to Bailleul, a town of which we were heartily sick before the
winter was far gone. In peace it would be once seen and never
remembered. It has no character, though I suppose the "Faucon" is as
well known to Englishmen now as any hotel in Europe. There are better
shops in Bethune and better cafes in Poperinghe. Of the "Allies
Tea-Rooms" I have already written.

Bailleul is famous for one thing alone--its baths. Just outside the town
is a large and modern asylum that contains a good plunge-bath for the
men and gorgeous hot baths for officers. There are none better behind
the line. Tuesdays and Fridays were days of undiluted joy.

Armentieres is sprawling and ugly and full of dirt--a correct and
middle-class town that reminded me of Bristol. In front of it are those
trenches, of which many tales wandered up and down the line. Here the