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Updated: June 17, 2025
One could have dropped two motor cars into the cavity. Who but Marins would have devised a celebration for us on July 4? The commandant, the captain, and a brace of lieutenants opened eleven bottles of champagne in the Café du Sport at Coxyde in honor of our violation of neutrality. It was little enough we were doing for those men, but they were moved to graceful speech.
Above the beach are the dunes, a long range of sandhills, tossed into all sorts of queer shapes by the wind, on which nothing grows but rushes or stunted Lombardy poplars, and which reach their highest point, the Hoogen-Blekker, about 100 feet above the sea, near Coxyde, a fishing village four or five miles from Nieuport.
One of the most characteristic spots in the land of the dunes is the village of Coxyde, which lies low amongst the sandhills, about five miles west from Nieuport, out of sight of the sea, but inhabited by a race of fisherfolk who, curiously enough, pursue their calling on horseback.
We can imagine them in the cells of Coxyde copying and copying for hours together, or bending over the exquisitely coloured drawings which are still preserved in the museums of Flanders. But their most useful work was done on the lands which lay round the Abbey. When St. Bernard was preaching the Crusade in Flanders he came to Coxyde.
So it seems certain now, though it is easy to prophesy after the event. I went along the coast as far as Coxyde and Nieuport and saw secret preparations for the coast offensive. We were building enormous gun emplacements at Malo-les Bains for long-range naval guns, camouflaged in sand dunes. Our men were being trained for fighting in the dunes. Our artillery positions were mapped out.
Not all the sprinkled shells and caravans of bleeding victims can cow the boys of the front line. In this work of lifting clear of horror, tobacco has been a friend to the soldiers of the Great War. "I wouldn't know a good cigarette if I saw it," said Geoffrey Gilling, after a year of ambulance work at Fumes and Coxyde.
Near Coxyde, and at the corner where the road from Furnes turns in the direction of La Panne, is a piece of waste ground which travellers on the Vicinal railway pass without notice. But here once stood the famous Abbey of the Dunes.
There are a great many villages, and in the distance rise the roof-tops and the towers and spires of famous old towns. Some of the villages are worth visiting. There is one called Coxyde, which lies low among the sandhills, not far from the sea. The people of this village live by fishing, but in a very curious way, for they do it on horseback.
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