106 The Ypres Times. I do not recollect anything very important taking place on the 17th of October, out that night we received instructions resulting in an order which began The Division will advance to-morrow and take Menin." There were very large bodies of the enemy advancing upon us from the north-east, Menin lay about south-east by east, was reported to be (together with Wervicq) strongly held, and we should have to move without support across the enemy's line of advance. The 87th Division of French Territorials had certainly dug a line of trenches in our rear, but this was not a division intended at the time for offensive warfare. However, the movement was ordered for the morning of Sunday, 18th, to start at about 8 a.m. I had heard overnight from one of the clerks that the only Catholic chaplain with the Division was to say Mass at six the next morning in a house about half-a-mile farther along the road. This was the Rev. Father Mwhom I had known in 1904 at Middelburg, Transvaal, where he was our Regimental Chaplain. When, at about a quarter to six the next morning, I got to the house indicated, I found a handful of R.A.M.C. men as congregation (it was the 22nd Field Ambulance's billet). In what had probably been the drawing-room of this little country-house in the wood of Veldhoek, Mass was celebrated. There were two of these houses in the wood, on opposite sides of the road, this one standing on the right, or south, side of the road from Ypres to Menin. Most of the furniture had been removed, and only a few English and American sporting prints were left on the walls. These were of the rather silly type, depicting lanky Yankees driving impossible trotting horses, and smoking long cigars the while. Negro servants in attendance, and tiny jockeys being ordered by grim trainers to stand no nonsense from viciously kicking race-horses. THE INDIANS AT YPRES. By Major F. A. de V. ROBERTSON (late attached 59th Royal Seinde Rifles, Frontier Force). "Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the dark lace have his due! Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few. Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them and smote them and slew. Tennyson. When the hideous gas attack burst on the defenders of Ypres, one of the first reinforce ments to be summoned was the Lahore Division, then resting in the neighbourhood of Bethune. On April 23rd we were ordered to stand ready, and on the afternoon of the 24th we marched off. We had not heard of the gas attack and we did not know where we were going. A staff officer hazarded a guess that we should do 12 miles that afternoon. We actually did 23, and very early next morning put in another 10 which brought us to the hutted camp by Vlamertinghe. We billeted at midnight of 24-25th at Boeschepe. The officers' mess was over a shop, and two dear old white-haired ladies who presided begged us not to smoke in the parlour On the 26th we went through Ypres and received orders to make a counter attack in the direction of St. Julien. I had recently been through a course of bombing and had been told to take command of the bomb party of my regiment, but had had no time to put the men through their paces before we marched. Those were the days of frequent changes in the pattern of bombs. As we prepared to deploy I served out the Battye bombs to the sepoys, who looked at them with dismay. At last a young Sikh remarked, But, Sahib, we have never seen a bomb with a fuse like this before. We used to light ours with matches." A pleasant situation, when just going into action The idea got about that the German trenches were 200 yards away. When our front line went over the top they found there was from 1,200 to 1,500 yards t'o go. Our

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1922 | | pagina 24