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That was the picture I carried away from the Nieuport line the smiling boy with his wounded arm, alert after his year of war, and more than a little scornful of one who had grown weary in conditions so prosperous for young men. I rode away from him, past the Coxyde encampment of his comrades.
Gleason in this morning's "Tribune" because, having spent several months in this region in ambulance work, I am able to support several of his statements from personal observation. The house he mentions on the beach near Coxyde Bains was beyond doubt intended for the purpose he describes.
The dunes lay between the North Sea and the Yser River in West Flanders and consisted of a stretch of sandy hillocks reaching from Coxyde to Nieuport les Bains. The Belgians had entrenched these dunes in an elaborate and clever manner, shoveling the sand into a series of high lateral ridges, with alternate hollows, which reached for miles along the coast.
Kipling would say, 'another story. The district in which Westende lies, with Lombaerdzyde, Nieuport, Furnes, and Coxyde close together, is the most interesting on the coast of Flanders. Le Coq, on the other hand, is in that part of the dune country which has least historical interest, and is chiefly known as the place where the Royal Golf Club de Belgique has its course.
He is married, with a child or two; his garden is warm in the afternoon sun. He turns wistfully to the young, who are so sure, to cheer him. With him it is bloodshed, the moaning of shell-fire, and harsh command. One afternoon at Coxyde, in the camp of the middle-aged the territorials an open-air entertainment was given.
The English invasion of the fifteenth century destroyed the work of the monks in their fields and gardens, but the Abbey itself was spared; and the great disaster did not come until a century later, when the image-breakers, who had begun their work amongst the Gothic arches of Antwerp, spread over West Flanders, and descended upon Coxyde.
It nosed its way in, crawled heavily a few inches up the coverlet, and turned its legs up. Two more came, alighted, sniffed and died. "You see," he said. Next day, the head of the Coxyde Poste motored over to Furnes for a call on his wounded helper. "Where does all that chatter come from?" he asked. Sister Teresa smiled. "It's your silent friend," she said.
Idesbald and Coxyde Bains, on a sand dune, commanding the Channel. After the war broke out the Belgians examined it and found it was a fortification. Its walls were of six-foot thickness, of heavy blocks of stone and concrete. Its massive flooring was cleverly disguised by a layer of fancy tiling.
If I ever do, it doesn't matter. I have had twenty years of very happy life. If he were forty-five, he would say, as a French officer at Coxyde said to me: "Four months, and I haven't heard from my wife and children. We had a pleasant home. I was well to do. I miss the good wines of my cellar. This beer is sour. We have done our best, we French, our utmost, and it isn't quite enough.
Idesbald to Coxyde Bains, up which ammunition could be fed to it for its coast defense work. A Belgian soldier rode into a Belgian village one evening at twilight during the early days of the war. An old peasant woman, deceived because of the darkness, and thinking him to be a German Uhlan, rushed up to him and said, "Look out the Belgians are here."
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