The road is absolutely empty, and we begin to feel a little nervous. We come to another corner by which is a wrecked house, in a corner of which, however, the inhabitants are still dwelling. All round are shell craters filled with suspiciously fresh yellow clay. Here and there broken trees lean sadly against their neighbours. I see an officer in khaki near by and I hail him.
"Is it far to the lines?"
"Straight up the road—I wouldn't take your car any farther than the end of the trees, though, and if I were you I should leave this corner. The Huns are rather fond of it, as we have got a battery here. They fired a hundred and fifty shells, mostly six-inch, after tea yesterday!"
"Push on, driver!"
Down the road we move swiftly between the splintered trees of a little wood. On the left are tattered canvas screens on frames. In some places great holes have been torn in them by shell-fire and the ragged fabric trails downward towards the ground. A whistling sound steals faintly on to our ears; it grows louder and deeper, with a sense of progression, and it ends in a heavy crash somewhere to our left. Again and again we hear the shrill whine deepen to a roar, and end in a burst—as large shells sail over to some hidden mark near the coast.
We are beginning to feel a little nervous, but are very keen to go on. It is a weird drive in this still deserted road, with its roughly-filled shell-holes and its broken leaning trees on either side. The wood ends on the outskirts of the town, which lies in front of us, a queer panorama of wrecked buildings of pink brick whose bared and half-broken roof rafters lie against the sky like some dismal and gigantic snake, while the whole has the unreal aspect of stage scenery.
Here we leave the car, and tell the driver to drive away from trouble should the German shells begin to fall near him. We walk into the shattered town with its tawdry shabby appearance of the back of an exhibition. Along the road the canvas screens flap slightly in the wind, above them appear the crumbled tops of ruined buildings, while every now and then we hear a bang, bang, bang, from the direction of the German trenches, and this noise has all the hollow artificiality of imitated gun-fire at a show or a circus. A few seconds pass, and crash! crash! crash! sound three slightly better imitations of shells bursting. The whole thing seems unreal: the buildings are so pink and villaesque: chocolate and motor tyre advertisements are painted on them: their doorways and walls are decorated with ugly porcelain ware and coloured tiles. It is as though a great battle was waging through the prim little lanes of the most innocent-looking villa town on the English coast,—it indeed is what is happening on the Belgian coast, except that here the buildings are still even more ugly and modern. There is no feeling of real danger—in spite of the deserted streets, and the occasional sound of a door being loudly shut, which is some not far distant shell exploding behind the strange screens.
We turn to the left and enter the town. Here is evident a little more animation. Soldiers saunter up and down, as though on the promenade listening to the band, the straw hat of English summer being substituted by the yellow-painted shrapnel helmet. Shells are now whistling in the town, and give a slightly more credible impression of artillery fire as the hollow bang of the explosion is followed in each case, a few seconds later, by the clatter and tinkle of the roofs and walls of Nieuport returning in pieces to ground level.
We ask the officer the way to the front lines, as if asking the way to the pier at Margate.
"First to the left—across a canal—turn right—and across the Yser!" he says obligingly; and adds, "You better get gas-masks and shrapnel helmets at the Salvage Dump over there!" ("Towels and bathing costumes at the little hut on the left," he might be saying!)