THE YPRES TIMES
77
steamer, was heard regretting that he had taken the examination for a Chartered
Secretary, instead of that for a Master Mariner.
Most of us were up and about by the time Dunkirk came up through the rain,
and, disembarking, we found that again the magic cornflower was open sesame
as far as Customs, etc., were concerned.
As the train neared Ypres one experienced the feeling that every wanderer
must experience as his boat train slows up outside Victoria; places at the windows
were at a premium.
How long the road seemed from Pop to Ypres as we steamed sedately
parallel with itand we marvelled that we used to march along that road night
after night, when stretcher-bearing, up Zonnebeke way; but then, most of us are
fast approaching middle-age.
Photo] LDuhameeuw, Ypres.
THE 85TH FIELD AMBULANCE PARTY.
Then, at last, the train took us slowly by the Sacre Coeur, where we started
our first field hospital in January, 1915. What a surprise to find that it has been
rebuilt practically as it stood before it was demolished by German shells.
In fact, that feature impressed us, possibly more than anything else, with
regard to the whole town of Ypres. Walking down the Rue au Buerre in 1930
seemed no whit different from what it did in the early days before the second
battle.
