CHAPTER VI CASTLES IN FLANDERS With the British, as with the French and German armies in the field, you will sometimes find Headquarters Staffs housed in a château. A Staff wants plenty of elbow-room, it wants quarters away from the noise and dust of the high-road and the bustle of a town; it has to choose a fairly secluded spot, so as to escape the vigilant eyes of enemy airmen and the bombardment which inevitably follows detection. This word château is very misleading. It is what you might call a “portmanteau” word. It signifies not only the Alexander Dumas type of medieval castle; it also means practically any large house standing in its own grounds. Thus, when I have set out to find the Headquarters of the Nth Division in the Château of Blancques (B 13 c., or some similar hieroglyphic, marking the spot on the Staff maps, will be the address given to me at General Headquarters), I have never known whether I shall find the Divisional General living amid the picturesque surroundings of a real old French château, with slender grey turrets, and lichen-covered walls, and a black and shining moat, or amid the stucco and red brick, the pitch-pine and stained glass, of some preposterous mansion built by a retired merchant on the outskirts of an industrial town. When I think of this war in years to come, however, I feel that I shall always see some of its incidents re-enacted against the idyllic background of one or other of the ancient châteaux of this part of France. There is little enough picturesqueness, Heaven knows, in this most business-like of wars, but there is an undeniable touch of romance in the scenes which take place in and about these fine old castles in our zone of occupation. I always came upon them with a feeling of surprise, these old châteaux, in a country that with its smoke-stacks and mine-shafts speaks of anything rather than of old-world romance. They are mostly tucked away behind a screen of trees, to shelter them from the icy winds which blow across these melancholy Flanders flats in winter; they are almost always surrounded by a moat, and stand in their own grounds, which remain in their natural state, with wide stretches of short grass interspersed with wild flowers between groups of fine old trees.