of the courtiers to smile, as if they thought that he had not obtained this favour merely by accident:  upon which he called out, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’ Evil to him that evil thinks; and as every incident of gallantry among those ancient warriors was magnified into a matter of great importance, he instituted the order of the garter in memorial of this event, and gave these words as the motto of the order.  This origin, though frivolous, is not unsuitable to the manners of the times; and it is indeed difficult by any other means to account, either for the seemingly unmeaning terms of the motto, or for the peculiar badge of the garter, which seems to have no reference to any purpose either of military use or ornament.”

APPENDIX V

GOLDFISH CHATEAU

The following note about Goldfish Chateau, contained in the Manchester Guardian of September 8, 1919, is relevant to the text: 

All the men who had any part in the tragic epic of Ypres will be interested in the news that the Church Army has taken over “Goldfish Chateau” as a hostel for pilgrims to the illimitable graveyards in the dreadful salient.

For some reason (writes a correspondent who was in it) we christened the place “Goldfish Chateau.”  It was a somewhat pretentious mansion, in Continental flamboyant style, standing just off the Vlamertinghe road about half a mile our side of Ypres.  Its grounds are ploughed up by shells and bombs, but most of the fountains and wretched garden statuary remains with the fishponds which perhaps gave the villa its army name, and rustic bridges most egregiously incongruous with the surrounding death and desolation.

All through the Ypres fighting it was a conspicuous landmark well known to every soldier, and used, as things got hotter and hotter, as staff headquarters, first for corps, then for division, and finally for brigade and battalion.

Strangely enough, the chateau never received a direct hit, though all the country round was ploughed up and every other building practically flattened out.  The camp tales accounted for this immunity in all sorts of sinister ways.  One story was that some big German personage had occupied the place.  Probably these were romantic fictions.  But the fact remained that “Goldfish Chateau” bore a charmed life in spite of the fact that the German sausage balloons almost looked down the chimneys and so many staffs lived there.  Hundreds of thousands of men in this country who could not name half the county towns in England would be able to describe every room in this Belgian villa outside Ypres.  Lancashire soldiers are well acquainted with it.

During the third battle of Ypres the transport of the 55th Division had to leave the fields just opposite the chateau in a hurry.  The Germans not only shelled the place searchingly, but one morning sent over about a dozen bombing planes.  Simultaneous shelling and bombing is not good for the nerves of transport mules.  But the luck of the “Goldfish Chateau” held.  Nothing hit it.