The Ypres Times.
103
time that the tomb of Jansenius was there, or I should have looked for it. There is another
fine church in Ypres, St. James's I think. As I returned from this church I saw many-
French cuirassiers in the Place d'Armes, making a brave show, with their long horsehair
plumes and burnished breast-plates.
Outside our Headquarters I saw a crowd of British soldiers around what appeared
to be two Belgian civilians. I stopped to hear what was going on, and my ears were
saluted with as rich a brogue as ever came out of Tipperary. The Belgian peasants
turned out to be two men of my regiment who had been taken prisoners at Mons, but
who had managed shortly afterwards to escape. From then till now they had been
wandering about the country, hiding in woods, the bottom of wells, etc., and befriended
all through by the French and Belgian people, though to harbour them was death. At
one time they had been given a lift in a gentleman's motor-car," they told me. After
weeks of wandering, during which time, of course, they had been given up for dead, they
had got into the vicinity of Ypres, and hearing that there were British troops there they
had come in. Their adventures would have filled a book. It was a piece of luck for them
to meet an officer of their own regiment. I gave them a good dinner, some money,
tobacco and pipes, and wrote home to the Depot about them, to relieve their people's-
anxiety.
One of them was called Murphy, and he came from Enniscorthy. The other was
a native of Kilkenny. Poor fellows, they had suffered enough, and I am thankful they
escaped the horrors that were in store for us, for I heard that they were to be sent home
at once to refit.
I slept that night in a little house with a winding staircase leading up to my room-
a typical house of the Middle Ages. On the morrow we were to turn and move east
wards from Ypres, to confront the enemy.
We started very early on the 16th October, long before it was light, and I moved
with Headquarters to where the ancient battlements are, and the moat. Again there
was the confusion that seems inseparable from night movements through towns, and my
General's anxiety and impatience were most acute. In the end, however, the tangle
got straightened out, and we pushed on. But Headquarters only proceeded as far as
a little inn at a point quite near the city, where the railway-crossed the road, while the
troops went forward to take up positions that were to become historic.
Of the 15,000 splendid infantry that marched jauntily out from Ypres that day, a
bare 2,000 were to escape death, wounds, or captivity, and of 400 officers scarcely 40.
From that date to the day I was wounded, on the 2nd November, events crowded
so thick and fast upon one another that to write a connected account of what happened
would be impossible to one who played only a very subordinate part in them.
I must say a word, though, of what was the manner of poor Tom Condon's death.
After I had been carried in by two brave fellows of the 60th, and was about to depart
from our Headquarters in the Huize Beukenhorst to hospital in Ypres, Tom came to me
to say good-bye. I felt dreadfully leaving him behind, and I asked him whether he would
like me to try to get him home. Ah, sure," he said, I'll see it out."
Some weeks afterwards, when in Guy's Hospital, I wrote to his father at ClonmeL
to ask for news of Tom. He told me* that Tom had been killed on the night of the 5th
November by a shell.
*Or, rather, with the wonderful delicacy of that class of Irishmen, he wrote it to my nurse, for
communication to me.Author.
