The main thoroughfare was blocked at frequent intervals by great barricades made from bathing machines, hauled in a row and filled with sand and paving stones. Asphalt tennis courts were scarred with shell-holes. No open space had been spared during the weeks of itinerant bombardment. As we approached the town French batteries of "75's" were firing hard from positions in the dunes by the roadway. The French General Officer Commanding arrived as we alighted from our car. But one house was standing in the northern edge of the town. Into it we filed on the heels of the French General, up its stair to the garret, and still up a rickety ladder to a point of vantage under the very eaves. Through shell-holes in the tile roofing, French observers directed the fire of the batteries below. Across the Yser, in front of us, we would see the French and German trenches among the low sand hills. For long spaces they ran but fifteen to twenty yards apart and in one sector a German sap was but five yards from the French escarpment. For a time we watched the shells from the "75's" bursting over the German trenches. Descending, we crossed the Yser practically at its mouth. A pontoon bridge, vaunting a placard showing it had been christened the "Pont Gal Joffre," led between twin piers. The bridge swayed and tossed like the deck of a channel steamer as we picked our way gingerly across it. Some months later a Jack Johnson, luckily placed by the enemy, entirely smashed that pontoon bridge. Gaining the northern bank we zig-zagged through deep trenches in the sand, reinforced here and there with timbers and stone. An open crater and a pile of _débris_ marked what had once been a lighthouse. Dug-outs, shelters in miniature, lined the sides of the crater nearest the Huns. The open bowl of sand was about forty feet in diameter. Near its centre gaped a shell-hole in the soft sand made by an unwelcome visitor which had come less than a half hour previously. Digging for a few moments, I unearthed the still warm timing-fuse of the 105-millimetre shell that had made the hole. The lighthouse position was, the sergeant of Tirailleurs said, a _mauvais place_. From morning until night of the day before the Huns had shelled it. Many shells had fallen in the hours just preceding our arrival. General de Lisle and Colonel Bridges left Hardress Lloyd and me there, "for safety," while they walked through the front line positions, which were from a hundred to a hundred and sixty yards further forward. I investigated the interiors of the tiny dug-outs during the General's absence. No shell fell near, however, and soon we were all retracing our steps to Nieuport-les-Bains. Once a sniper spied one of the party, and a bullet from his rifle kicked up a spurt of sand a few feet from my head. We acknowledged the attention by an additional foot or so of "stoop" thenceforth.