On the way from Armentières to Plug Street we found the ruins of a little estaminet, within which an O.P. of 1914 had been constructed by Colonel Gill. Towers with walls 3 feet thick had not been thought of in those days, and the light steel framework of the O.P. stood up, spidery, above the brick rubbish. At a farmhouse still standing across the road it was interesting to find a kindly French peasant woman who had now been able to return to her house, where she had stayed with her family for six months during the earlier fighting, living in the cellar. Her children seemed to cherish affectionate recollections of a certain kindly English "Capitaine Frederic," who was "rouge" and who gave them chocolates, and whom by these particulars I was afterwards able to identify. I suppose we are likely always to call Ploegsteert "Plug Street." The village is, of course, in ruins, but the wood, of which [Plate 33] shows only a corner, is too large to have been totally destroyed like the woods north of the Somme. At "Hyde Park Corner" (there were several "Hyde Park Corners" in Flanders) one came across the sight, only too familiar in many parts of the war area, of a British cemetery ([Plate 34]). It had been carefully tended and looked after, as we found to be always the case.
PLATE XXIV.
NEUVE CHAPELLE.
Two crucifixes remained standing at Neuve Chapelle after the Action of March, 1915. One of them has disappeared; the one photographed stands in what must have been the churchyard. A dud shell has split the shaft without bringing it down.
PLATE XXV.
ON THE AUBERS RIDGE.