The Valley of DeathA Memory.
48
The Ypres Times.
Looking through a field service note book, a relic of my active service days as an
Artillery officer, the medley of gunnery notes, formulae, range and wind tables, convey
only a dim recollection of their everyday use to my mind, but the 23rd Psalm, written
on a page to itself, brings back vivid mental pictures.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil
I had written those words as an article of faith and as a reminder of my promise to return
again, made on the eve of departure from the one nearest and dearest to me.
There is the Death Valley of Somme memories, lying shadowy in the frostbound
stillness of a moonlit night in early '17, the chalk mounds of the old French trenches on
the hillside showing up in strong relief, but my thoughts travel to that valley lying beyond
the Yser, North of
Ypres, over the crest
of the Pilckem Ridge
and away to the Eastern
flank of the Salient
down to Poelcapelle
the shallow valley of
Passchendaele. What
memories of human pas
sion and stoic endurance
does not this name con
vey Of wraith-like
forms of toiling men
laden with burdens tra
versing a sea of mud
impassable to four-
footed beasts of wal
lowing hulks of aban
doned tanks half-sub
merged in the morass,
of stiffened human forms
Imperial War Museum.] DEATH VALLEY [Crown Copyright. prone and inani
mate, like puppet play
things thrown down in peevish anger by some titanic monster. Vivid and stark in
reality yet strangely unreal was existence in this place, where the veil separating Life
and Death had worn thin.
A gunner's life was no sinecure during this phase of the war, when the infantry on.
either side manned ill-defined front lines of water-logged shell holes, and movement was
confined to the duckboard tracks across the intervening wastes. Under such conditions,
active warfare consisted mainly of blind artillery duels, or shelling the enemies' lines
of communication and billets from map reference or aeroplane information. Pulling
out of one sticky show after weeks of labour spent in making a position comparatively
tenable, only meant taking over another, where one's labour commenced all over again
the monotony of existence being varied in the case of those lost tribes or nobody's
children (dubbed Army Troops by the higher commands)who were used to replace
casualties or to stiffen up the Divisional Artillery in places where liveliness was anticipated.
On three occasions have I almost felt the hand of death pass over me. Once, on
Vimj7 Ridge, where we had dug narrow slots like vertical letter-boxes in which we literally
posted ourselves when Fritz started his morning and evening hate, after the usual opening
bursts during which we had slithered into our respective slots behind our guns, my shell
