A pleasant afternoon could be spent on the old ramparts.  We were there, as a matter of fact, to do a little building-up and clearing-away when the German itch for destruction proved too strong for their more gentlemanly feelings.  We lay on the grass in the sun and smoked our pipes, looking across the placid moat to Zillebeke Vyver, Verbranden Molen, and the slight curve of Hill 60.  The landscape was full of interest.  Here was shrapnel bursting over entirely empty fields.  There was a sapper repairing a line.  The Germans were shelling the town, and it was a matter of skill to decide when the lumbersome old shell was heard exactly where it would fall.  Then we would walk back into the town for tea and look in at that particularly enterprising grocer’s in the Square to see his latest novelties in tinned goods.

From Ypres the best road in Flanders runs by Vlamertinghe to Poperinghe.  It is a good macadam road, made, doubtless by perfidious Albion’s money, just before the war.

Poperinghe has been an age-long rival of Ypres.  Even to-day its inhabitants delight to tell you the old municipal scandals of the larger town, and the burghers of Ypres, if they see a citizen of Poperinghe in their streets, believe he has come to gloat over their misfortunes.  Ypres is an Edinburgh and Poperinghe a Glasgow.  Ypres was self-consciously “old world” and loved its buildings.  Poperinghe is modern, and perpetrated a few years ago the most terrible of town halls.  There are no cocktails in Poperinghe, but there is good whisky and most excellent beer.

I shall never forget my feelings when one morning in a certain wine-merchant’s cellar I saw several eighteen-gallon casks of Bass’s Pale Ale.  I left Poperinghe in a motor-ambulance, and the Germans shelled it next day, but my latest advices state that the ale is still intact.

Across the road from the wine-merchant’s is a delectable tea-shop.  There is a tea-shop at Bailleul, the “Allies Tea-Rooms.”  It was started early in March.  It is full of bad blue china and inordinately expensive.  Of the tea-shop at Poperinghe I cannot speak too highly.  There is a vast variety of the most delicious cakes.  The proprietress is pleasant and her maids are obliging.  It is also cheap.  I have only one fault to find with it—­the room is small.  Infantry officers walk miles into Poperinghe for their tea and then find the room crowded with those young subalterns who supply us with our bully.  They bring in bulldogs and stay a long time.

Dickebusch used to be a favourite Sunday afternoon’s ride for the Poperinghe wheelers.  They would have tea at the restaurant on the north of Dickebusch Vyver, and afterwards go for a row in the little flat-bottomed boats, accompanied, no doubt, by some nice dark Flemish girls.  The village, never very pleasant, is now the worse for wear.  I remember it with no kindly feelings, because, having spent a night there with the French, I left them in the morning too early to obtain a satisfactory meal, and arrived at Headquarters too late for any breakfast.