152
The Ypres Times.
to return for a short while to the scene of so much courage, sacrifice and suffering, in which
he himself played a part.
Oh! I know what a lot of you will say What? Go back there, after all I went
through I never want to set eyes on the place again," etc. etc. I said all this myself,
but in the summer of 1924 I thought perhaps, after all, Ypres was worth revisiting,
so I went.
And up to date I have been back five times
There is something indefinable about Ypres
now that, once revisited, you feel impelled
to go again; there is something in the spirit
of the Salient that begs you to return, and
each time you find something new and in
teresting, perhaps scenes or landmarks that
remind you of bygone days names of old
pals, engraved in stone only slightly less
deeper than they are in your own memory,
bring back vivid recollections of the hell that
the Salient once was.
I have re-entered Ypres on each of my
visits in a varietv of wavs. I have come
PRES—POPERIXGHE ROAD. up from the base as of yore, through Haze-
brouck and Pop" (alongwhich line one can
still see bully and biscuit tins in the ditches). I have rolled up in a car across the Menin
Ridge, and have clattered down the Menin Road in a cloud of dustfancy dust on the
Menin road! I have arrived by train from Ostend, where, as the track winds down from
the crest of the Passchendaele ridge, one can realise why both ourselves and Eritz wanted
these heights and on one occasion, my second visit that particular year, my friend and
myself, in walking kit, arrived hot, dusty and nearly broke, through the Lille gate from the
direction of Messines, and cut things so fine on our return from Ostend that we only had
sevenpence and a slab of chocolate to sustain us from the Sunday, morning leaving t lie re
till next morning in the north of England.
But the best impressions of a return to
Ypres are obtained when one approaches
up that road of immortal memory from
Poperinghe.
On this occasion myself and party travelled
by car and came over with it, and nearing
Pop.," an old Army notice painted on a
wall, All traffic this way," brought back
visions of the endless stream of everything
pertaining to war which one time poured
through this little town night and day for
four years.
How different all was on the day we sped YPRESRAMPARTS AXDJMOAT.
throughnot a sign of life this hot afternoon
except two solitary dogs of extreme sizes, harnessed beneath a handcart loaded with the
customary huge flat loaves waiting outside one of the numerous In'Den Verkoopt
something or other) estaininets gone were all the egg and chip notices, and the dis
plays of gaily woven silk souvenirs and postcards which used to have an irresistible
attraction for our poor little five franc notes.
In fact, the place was so silent it seemed positively uncanny, and I felt sure we must
have dreamt all these things.
