REMINISCENCES OF YPRES, 1914.
The Ypres Times.
119
The recent article in The Times, 31st October, reprinted I believe in this issue, brought
back many memories of the Salient ten years ago. To begin with what a different looking
country it was then from what it became later on in the War. When we first marched into
Ypres, 21st October, 1914, the town was a clean, rather sleepy place with good solid
respectable looking houses. It gave one the impression that the inhabitants were well-
to-do people, no very great wealth, at the same time not much poverty. The electric
trams were still running along the Menin Road, though they did not go further than what
was afterwards known as Hell Fire Corner." The brigade to which I was attached
marched through the town and out on to the Wieltje Road. The situation seemed to
be uncertain, and after halting by the road side for some hours we finally went into
billets two battalions in St. Jean, one battalion at Wieltje, and one battalion in two large
farms on the left of the road afterwards known as Cross Roads Farm and Hill Top Farm.
Brigade Headquarters were in Haseler House, later a very famous O.P. This was the
private house of the Commandant of the Cavalry School at Ypres, and I well remember
seeing pinned on the wall of his study the time table of the lectures and exercises for
August. I did not go back to the Salient again until February, 1916, and it was difficult
to recognise in the appalling ruin the pretty comfortable little villa that had sheltered
us fifteen months previously.
The following day we moved forwards to the line of the Langemarck-Zonnebeke Road.
I remember being struck by the vast fields of turnips (or were they sugar beet?) and the
numberless cows wandering about in torture, poor beasts, with no one to milk them.
Targe pink pigs also were numerous. I confess I had never before realised that pigs were
carnivorous until I actually saw three or four busily engaged in devouring a dead horse.
I have often wondered whether they confined their attention only to horses. The British
soldier is as a rule rather partial to pork, but the sight of these pigs thus engaged quite
cured him of his desire for pig in any form.
After several days on the Tangemarck side we moved over to Polygon Wood, marching
via Hooge Chateau, then a fine country house, with many out buildings, stables, green
houses, etc. We now came on a different type of country. Heather and thick fir woods
not unlike Pyestock Wood at Aldershot. Polygon Wood for instanceby the way I
notice from old diaries that at the time we always spoke of this wood as Race-course
Wood Polygon Wood was its proper pre-war name, but this name only came into use
laterwas a large wood of young Scotch firs extending to within 300 or 400 yards of the
Menin Road at Gheluvelt Village. The so-called Polygon from which the wood took its
name, was merely an elliptically shaped Cavalry Schooling Ground cut out of the centre
of the wood. Why the School should have chosen such a curious spot for their training
ground I was never able to ascertain. Many of the horses that did so well at the Olympia
Show were trained on this course and I remember when we first got there seeing all the
well known Olympia fences, triple bar, railway gate, stile, etc., still in situ. The sight of
these fences was too much for some of our young officers, and in spite of the fact that there
was a good deal of shelling going on and quite a number of shells were dropping into the
Polygon itself, a dozen or so of our young bloods were soon careering round the school
and over the fences until sternly ordered by the Brigadier to desist. I am afraid the
fences could hardly be described as in situ after that. At the end of the Polygon Wood
stood a large mound of earth. This was the stop-butt of a four-target range, where
presumably the Cavalry School carried out its annual course. This butt remained up
to the last day of the War, a conspicuous mark in that sea of desolation. We lost it,
I think, in the first gas attack and did not regain it until the Passchendaele fighting in
the autnmu of 1017. After the Armistice my Brigade was quartered near Tille and I
