THE LINE THAT CURVED ROUND YPRES. I.The Defenders of the Salient. The Ypres Times. 5 Any man who went through Ypres along the Menin Road, who sat in the dirty ditches of Hooge, who helped in any way to get forward to the ridges up to Passchendaele, and defended by any service the last hold on the ruins of the city, passed the highest test of human courage. There were other British battlefields where the test came. The fields of the Somme were the fighting grounds and the graveyards of thousands of gallant men. From St. Quentin to La Bassée across the Vimy Ridge, out beyond Arras, there is not a yard of earth that does not belong to the history of British valour, suffering and sacrifice. Each hummock of ground was a landmark in this frightful epic of human strife. But the Yprcs Salient is especially the greatest battleground of the British race. All our divisions passed through the furnace there at one time or other. Not one of them escaped that ordeal, and by general consent it was the worst place of all. It was worst of all in the early days of the war, when the Germans made their thrust towards Calais, and all we had of strengthwhich was not muchbarred their way until the lines were thin and ragged, but still unbroken, in the first Battle of Ypres, and the second. It was the worst place when the new armies came along and learnt their first lessons in the school of war, and were flogged by shell-fire. The enemy had all the By SIR PHILIP GIBBS, K.B.E.

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1923 | | pagina 5