A SILHOUETTE OF FLANDERS, YPRES, 1916. The Ypres Times. 33 Imperial War Museum PhotographCrown Copyright. The sun has just dipped beneath the horizon over towards Poperinghe the long, hot June afternoon is at an end. We parade beneath the trees which fringe the farm yard pond, rifles and gas helmets have been inspected and, as we await the order to move off, we watch the lazy blossoming of the black shrapnel over the avenue of the Chateau des Trois Tours. The nearest way to the front line is along this avenue but we prefer to make a détour each evening, leaving the enemy to waste his evening hate upon splintered poplars and the grass-grown drive. And so we file off across the fields towards the Brielen Cross-roads. It is not easy goingthe twilight, the rank grass, the weed-covered shell holes, the trip-wires of the Field Telephone Companies, and thigh gumboots, all conspire against us. But we reach the road at last. Darkness is creeping gradually across the dusty plain and the enemy hauls down his observation balloons. Then the roads, silent and deserted by day, leap into life and become eddying streams of traffic. Men, horses, guns, wagons, limbers, lorries and ambulances seem to appear from nowhere, creeping painfully forward towards the semi-circle of Very Lights now commencing to rise and fall away to the east. Some way down the road we halt at Railway Cottage, once the level-crossing keeper's house, but now the site of a flourishing R.E. dump. Each night a long goods train creaks to a halt at this point and its load of trench stores is deposited among the ruins. We are a little late this evening; already the dump is alive with working and carrying parties and hard-throated R.E sergeants are endeavouring to decipher indents for war material thrust upon them from all sides. At first glance it would appear that the only possible way of obtaining material and satisfaction is the appropriation of the stores while the R.Ë. sergeant is otherwise engaged. But our officer fights his way through the mob, now assuming the proportions of a race meeting, and obtains the undivided attention of one of the all-powerful minions of the R.E.s. In a few minutes we are all loaded up with sheets of corrugated iron, pickets, sandbags and A frames, and the human pack train seeks the comparative peace of the road leading down towards the canal.

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1926 | | pagina 7