THE YPRES TIMES
179
Witness, then, the denouement. Five months later I returned home demobilized,
and on making application for my gratuity I was informed in reply that as I had
been a deserter from such and such a date to such and such a date I was only
entitled to a part gratuity. This was the last straw. Fatuity could go no further.
I may be criticized for it, but I have never applied for my medals. I don't know
why. It wasn't through indifference, for I should have been proud to wear them.
Perhaps it was just that putting-off habit. Perhaps I had a dread at the back of my
mind that I should get back the awful reminder that I had been a deserter from
such and such a date and that, consequently, I wasn't entitled to any medals.
J. M.
TO many people The Salient was represented on the map by fluctuating lines,
which indicated the flow and ebb of the German attacks upon Ypres. To others,
however, the defence of The Salient was not a matter merely of infantry, cavalry
or artillery activity upon a restricted front, for they realized that during four long years
many thousands of flights were made by airmen into the far Beyond, and that many
hundreds of pilots and observers gave their lives in gallant and unseen deeds of attack
and observation. In this connection an infantry officer, who was afterwards killed,
wrote to his wife
It is about six o'clock. The sun is setting a deep golden red in the westin the east, a black
mist rising from the earth after a very hot day. Beyond the mist is the war, which you can read about
in the morning but will not understand, for the war correspondent is yet to be born who can put into
English the self-sacrifice, heroism and gallantry of those who die fighting beyond that black mist.
This is a great time of the day for Airmen, because observance is so much better before sundown, and the
air is littered with our machines, passing to and fro through that black mist, into the war beyond and
then returning, as it seems, out of nowhere with their messages of information. Presently, perhaps,
signals may be sounded that warn us that the Boche planes are about, and soon the sky is peppered with
little clouds of smoke. Our planes will go over and drive them off, turning the earth into one huge
bee-hive as it seems. Our Airmen are wonderful. If ever you hear a disparaging word you may
safely contradict the calumny, for calumny it would be. On these long fine days they are always
about, and, wonderful as are the feats we see, those they do in the black beyond are far more mar
vellous. Not only in the daytime, but at night one can hear them going to and returning from one of
their raids over Boche territories."
When the final offensive came in October and November, 1918, the activity of the
airmen was, if possible, even more pronounced than it had ever been in the preceding
years. Low-flying patrols, the persistent bombing of enemy-occupied towns, such as Menin,
Wytschaete, Bousbecque and Roncq, harrying the retreating enemy with machine-gun
fire, attacking enemy aeroplanes and other dangerous duties resulted in many deaths.
Thus it was that after the Armistice, the crosses and graves of British airmen were found
ten or twenty miles beyond the Menin Gate. Their resting-places for several years after
the war were undisturbed. Many of them were in the Belgian communal cemeteries
or in German military cemeteries such as that at Lauwe, near Menin, and could not be
attended to by the Imperial WTar Graves Commission. The Commission, therefore,
