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.