Tèe Ypres Times.
39
which would, I believe, be amply subscribed for when an appeal for that object is made.
The need for some special memorial to commemorate our dead heroes is evident.
All Saints' Day is kept in Belgium as a solemn fête day in remembrance of the
dead. Crowds visit the graves, decorating them with such flowers as can be had, and
ceremonies round the catafalque in temporary churches like at Gheluvelt mark the day.
There was nowhere the Belgian authorities could lay their official wreath but on the
grave of Prince Maurice of Battenberg." Our cemeteries, now well kept, must inevitably
with the lapse of time and personal interest become unmarked and used for other purposes,
as happens in our own towns in England. Strange would it seem to future generations
if we, who knew the men who went out and returned no more, did not honour their memory
and show our gratitude.
The Ypres League must see to it that a conspicuous, lasting and beautiful Memorial
to our Glorious Dead is erected.
THE PLATOON THAT DISAPPEARED.
By E. C. MATTHEWS, Lieut, (retired), D.C.L.I.
The following short article is extracted by Mr. Matthews from his own official History
of the D.C.L.I. in the Great War.)
After the first liquid fire attack by the Huns on July 30th, 1915, it was -thought
advisable to increase the fighting reserve in Ypres by some 2,000 bayonets. The 6th
D.C.L.I. were among the first of these' reinforcements. During June, July and August,
1915, troops were always in Ypresmostly in the ramparts. The company that chose
the cloisters of St. Martin in preference to cellars unfortunately left a cooker smoking
near the gate of the cloister on August 11th. A German scout, flying low over the town
unopposed, noted this, with effect.
In the south-west corner of the cloisters 44 men were buried under a huge mass of
stone debris, the work of heavy German gunfire from Houthoulst Forest direction. This
was the day on which the 6th Battalion Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry suffered heavy
losses through being shelled by the Austrian 17.2-inch howitzers. About 6 a.m. the
Town Major of Ypres organized a rescue party, and took some men of the 11th King's
Liverpool Regiment (Pioneers) to try and dig out those buried. Later the]) were rein
forced. After some further casualties from a second shell which arrived shortly afterwards,
they succeeded in extricating one man only. This man was met later in a hospital at
Norwich by the Town Major.
When the piping times of peace again reigned, the work of excavation at Ypres
revealed the bodies of 40 British soldiers, and there is little doubt that these men belonged
to B Company of the 6th D.C.L.I. The Nation Beige reported that the building
was in the Grande-place, and the British bodies were discovered in a cellar. The men
had evidently been overcome in their sleep by a gas attack, for they were lying in peaceful
attitudes, some with their heads pillowed in their arms. One platoon of infantrythen
stated to have been the Cornwallswas certainly billettecL in the cellars under the ruins
of the Cloth Hall, and the discovery of 40 bodies during the work of clearing the ruins we
may well accept as being the solution of the mystic disappearance of the Cornishmen
who, at the time, were thought to have been practically wiped out as a whole platoon.
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