SIGNBOARDS IN THE SALIENT.
10
The Ypres Times.
It was with a peculiar thrill that, wandering over the Salient three years ago, I came
from time to time upon a signboard in a deserted trench. That was when reconstruction
was little more than a project. Then, the board which marked Shrapnel Corner was nailed
to a mutilated tree now, both tree and board have disappeared, as have the trees of the
Men in Road, with their shreds of camouflage and telephone-wire.
The trenches themselves are now no more but then one could explore No Man's
Land the day long and see only a few peasants whose clothing seemed to take its colour
from the dull brown of the battlefield. The silence struck one as uncanny after the babel
of gunfire which once had roared there the population of thousands living in trenches
had dropped to dozens living in wooden huts provided by King Albert's Fund, or in half-
circles of elephant iron. As I walked, some sign would peep up from the weedsStrong
Point No. 5 (manned by a Lewis Gun and 20 rifles) or 2nd Zone Defences or
(at the Bluff) Machine Gun 5. 1.34."
At the Bluff, grey Ypres is behind me in the distance below me the stagnant
desolation of the Canal, with its mangled bridge, stretches towards Hollebeke
on the further bank, still guarded by the tank Slippery Sam," the White Chateau lies
in a pale heap, surrounded by its splintered trees. Its cellars, despite its exterior, are
almost intact, and you can reach them, if you have a light, by steps from inside a pill-box
at one end of the ruin. The mass of brick overhead is supported by pillars which remind
one of a crypt.
Amid a litter of wine bottles, helmets, bombs and rags of uniform, I found a little
book, whose title, being interpreted, reads Trench books for the German People.
The Lying Press of our Enemies. By Cscar Michel." It contains much hate-inspiring
matter for shell-shaken Jerry!
My fellow-townsmen of the 47th Division, after bombing out the pill-boxes on the
Damstrasse, took the place in bitter fighting three years ago. Others of them, in the
L-R.B., going over the bags between my view-point and Hill 60 railway-cutting, went slap
through three lines of trenches (which still wind crumbling among the shell-holes) till
they swung round on the Canal spoil-heaps and lost heavily before they took them,
although our rail-mounted naval guns had seemingly left no living thing on the mounds.
Thames Street and Grand Fleet Street are no more, but here is the Drive, with its sign
still pointing on, though the last man went by long ago (with luck) to Courtrai and Cologne
Here and there lies a rum-jar boxes of Mills bombs shed their contents Stokes shells
abound. Perhaps some other member of the League may know the trench better than
I dohas perhaps dragged S. A. A. and bombs from this fallen-in dug-out marked Dump," or
helped carry back some London lad who will never see Charing Cross again the Drive
leads down to Hedge Row Cemetery, a cluster of wooden crosses, to my mind infinitely
more beautiful (if less practical) than the flat headstones.
In the Ravine the rotting duckboards give beneath your foot and the water oozes
up from the marsh. A light railway of ever-varying gauge begins and ends in a shell-hole
you kick against a tin hat in the long grass.
And Windy Cornernot an empty name, for I know a man whom a sniper missed
by inches there. They did get the wind up," but their courage, in Carlyle's words, was
the overcoming of fear," and they carried on as though fear did not exist. There is the
Caterpillar with its huge crater, at whose edge lie the white bones and tattered uniform
