54
The Ypres Times.
THE END OF WIPERS."
A Sketch written during the first week of May.
By "SAPPER."
A nice balmy day, a good motor-car, and, a first-class lunch in prospect. Such was my
comparatively enviable state less than a month ago. True, the motor-car's springs had
had six months' joy riding on the roads of Flanders, and the lunch was to be in Ypres
but one can't have everythingand Wipers was quite a pleasant spot then. In the
square, souvenir hunters wandered through the Cloth Hall and the cathedral intent on
strange remnants of metal for the curious at home. Tobacco shops did a roaring trade
market day was on. Villainous fragments of fried fish changed hands for a consideration,
and everyone was happy and contented.
Into a delightful little shop I ultimately found my way. Twelve small tables, spread
with spotless linen, and, needless to say, full of officers satisfying the inner man, presided
over by two charming French girls, seemed good enough for me, and, sure enough, the
luncheon was on a par with the girls, which is saying some in the vernacular. As I
left with a consignment of the most excellent white wine, for thirsty officers elsewhere,
two soldiers passed me.
Say, Bill," said one, this 'ere Wipers is a bit of orl right. They can leave me here
as long as they likes." And as I crossed the railway at the western end of the town, one
shell passed sullenly overhead, the first I had heard that daythe only discordant note,
the only sound of war. That was a month ago.
A fortnight ago duty took me past the same little shop and through the square. This
time I did not lingerthere were no souvenir hunters there was no market-day. Again
I was in a motor-car, but this time I rushed throughhoping for the best. Instead of
one shell they came in their hundreds. A drunken, swaying noise through the air, like
a tramway-car going homewards on its last journey down an empty road, a crash and
the roar of the explosion, mixed with the rumble of falling masonry. Another house
gone in the dead city. Huge holes clawed up in the pavè road, and in every corner dead
and twisted horses. Children lying torn in the gutter, women and men gaping in their
death agony. Here and there a soldier legs, arms, fragments of what were once living,
breathing creatures. And in nearly every house, had one gone in, little groups of civilians
still moaning and muttering feebly. They had crept into their homes, frightened, terrified
to wait for the death that must come. And without cessation came the shells. In
one corner a motor-ambulance stood drunkenly on three wheels in the middle a wagon
overturned with four dead horses still fast in the traces, and underneath them stuck out
two legs, the legs of what had been the lead driver. A city of the deadnot a sign of
visible life, save only our car picking its way carefully through dead horses and masses
of bricks fallen across the road. Yesterday's tobacco buyers stiff in the gutters yester
day's vendors of fish dying in some corner like rats in a trap yesterday's luncheon-shop
a huge hole in the wall with the rafters twisted and broken, and the floor of the room
above scattered over the twelve tables with the spotless linen. And perhapsworst of
allthe terrible, all-pervading stench which seemed to brood like a pall over everything.
At last we were clear of the square and getting into the open east of the town. Over
the bridge and up a slight inclinethen clear above the noise of the car for one most
unpleasant second we heard the last tram going home. The next second a deafening
roar, and we were in the centre of the stifling black fumes of a present from Krupps. All
would have been well but for a dead horse in the centre of the road, which caused an
abrupt stop. We left the car till the fumes had cleared away, and stumbled, gasping into
the air, with the water pouring out of our eyes and the fumes catching our throats. And
it was then we saw yesterday's Tommy who had regarded "Wipers as a bit of orl right."
