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!) We enter the salvage dump--an empty front room littered with all kinds of implements, and ask for the apparently necessary gas-mask and helmet, which are carefully dusted by a whistling sergeant. Carrying these helmets in one hand and the masks slung over our necks, we proceed towards the front. Now here for one moment we realise that we really are near a real war, for round the corner walk a couple of nonchalant Tommies carrying a stretcher, covered with a blanket, from beneath which protrude two heavy boots, toes towards the ground. We hurry on and turn to the left and come out into the open, across which we move erratically, for, at the whistle of each shell, we sit in a crater until the noise of its explosion encourages us to proceed.