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Updated: June 24, 2025
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. Not far from Dickebusch is the Desolate Chateau. Before the war it was a handsome place, built by a rich coal-merchant from Lille. I visited it on a sunny morning.
Something enraged him at the sight of that shelled village. "Damn them!" he said. "Damn the war! Damn all dirty dogs who smash up life!" Four times the thing happened, and we were glad there had been a minute or so between us and Dickebusch. There was seldom a real peace on the way to Ypres. The German gunners had wakened up again. They always did. They were getting busy, those house-wreckers.
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.
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.
The last time I saw the Ypres salient was from the shoulder of the Scherpenberg. The torn church tower of Dickebusch stood up darkly near a leaden gleam of water. From St.
Three men were lying up against a garden wall. We asked them for news. They could not tell us much, except that the Germans were still advancing. "We was at Dickebusch when 'e started slingin' stuff over gorblimy, 'e don't 'alf wallop yer umpteen of our mates got bleed'n' well biffed. We cleared out afore it got too 'ot."
The British made it a practise at that time to keep their troops out of the inhabited towns that were within range of the enemy's guns, so as not to give any excuse for shelling them. LaClytte was a very small town of but a few hundred native inhabitants, but Dickebusch, situated about midway between the lines and LaClytte, was a city of several thousands.
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