ly unmeaning terms of the motto, or for the peculiar
badge of the garter, which seems to have no reference to any purpose
either of military use or ornament."

APPENDIX V

GOLDFISH CHATEAU

The following note about Goldfish Chateau, contained in the _Manchester
Guardian_ of September 8, 1919, is relevant to the text:

All the men who had any part in the tragic epic of Ypres will be
interested in the news that the Church Army has taken over "Goldfish
Chateau" as a hostel for pilgrims to the illimitable graveyards in the
dreadful salient.

For some reason (writes a correspondent who was in it) we christened the
place "Goldfish Chateau." It was a somewhat pretentious mansion, in
Continental flamboyant style, standing just off the Vlamertinghe road
about half a mile our side of Ypres. Its grounds are ploughed up by
shells and bombs, but most of the fountains and wretched garden statuary
remains with the fishponds which perhaps gave the villa its army name,
and rustic bridges most egregiously incongruous with the surrounding
death and desolation.

All through the Ypres fighting it was a conspicuous landmark well known
to every soldier, and used, as things got hotter and hotter, as staff
headquarters, first for corps, then for division, and finally for
brigade and battalion.

Strangely enough, the chateau never received a direct hit, though all
the country round was ploughed up and every other building practically
flattened out. The camp tales accounted for this immunity in all sorts
of sinister ways. One story was that some big German personage had
occupied the place. Probably these were romantic fictions. But the fact
remained that "Goldfish Chateau" bore a charmed life in spite of the
fact that the German sausage balloons almost looked down the chimneys
and so many staffs lived there. Hundreds of thousands of men in this
country who could not name half the county towns in England would be
able to describe every room in this Belgian villa outside Ypres.
Lancashire soldiers are well acquainted with it.

During the third battle of Ypres the transport of the 55th Division had
to leave the fields just opposite the chateau in a hurry. The Germans
not only shelled the place searchingly, but one morning sent over about
a dozen bombing planes. Simultaneous shelling and bombing is not good
for the nerves of transport mules. But the luck of the "Goldfish
Chateau" held. Nothing hit it.

* * *