The Ypres Times.
153
But that pres-Pop. roadas soon as you get on it again the intervening years fade
right awav, and you feel again that curious anticipatory sensation as you wonder what
it's like up there this time."
The same old treeswith occasional gapsand a few pill-box dug-outs here and there
still as we left them, except where the natives had been trying to demolish them, but
who had got as fed up trying to break them as we did to make them.
Up past Ylamertinghe, all brand new, and we get our first glimpse of the new Ypres,
the town having been so well described before that a repetition of the description of this
famous Flemish city which has arisen from its ashes is unnecessary, beyond the fact that
nowhere in the whole of Belgium will you find better appointed hotels or shops.
This, however, is by the way, and although the new town seems very attractive
after the desolation which we remember existed there, I must confess that I come often
to Ypres only for the memories and scenes associated with the Salient in the War days.
Although the whole town has been fully rebuilt from a residential point of view, only
half seems to be occupied, and a walk along any of the side streets just about dusk is
particularly impressive, and makes one wonder if the reason for the apparent half occupation
of the place is because the spirits of some of our vanished army remain in possession of
their earthly habitations, for not a sound
comes from anywhere except the hollow
reverberating sound of one's own footsteps,
which, caught up and re-echoed by the
clustered buildings, alleyways and passages,
seems to merge again into the steady,
measured tramp of marching feetshades
of terrible, albeit, wonderful times, bringing
back memories both grave and gay. I have
watched tourists arriving in the Grand' Place
on a short trip to Ypres and the battle
fields," as the booking-office notice boards at
the coast resorts proclaim. In they come,
hill 60. with a rattle and a clatter through the Menin
Gate, all packed together in huge char a-
bancs, and after a raucous-voiced guide has pointed out the very obvious Cloth
Hall ruins and allowed enough time for refreshers, they are whirled away again
to one of the show places, perhaps Hill 60, and when they get back home they think
they have seen Ypres and the Salient, and perhaps begin to wonder what all the fuss
was about. This is decidedly not the way to visit the glorious resting-place of a quarter
of a million of the Empire's dead, for what do they know of Ypres, who only the Grand'
Place know
Xo, the tragic history of the town and its environs is revealed now only to those
who take the well-rewarded trouble of going out into the highway's and byways surround
ing it. The Eeague guidebook, The Immortal Salient, will, whether you have been before
or not, open your eyes to the fact that weeks, let alone hours, could be spent in exploring
the historical scenes of valour and stoical endurance undertaken so light-heartedly for over
four long wretched years by the finest armies who ever marched, for has any army
ever endured a worse living hell than the defenders of Ypres?
Go and see some of the little corners of England (there are scores of them) dotted
over the Salient, little bits of holy ground reclaimed from the withering blast of war-
stricken land, which contain the poor broken bones of many of the Empire's best, and.
which, alas, also hold the dead heart of someone who waited in vain.
You owe it to them to pay homage to their resting-places, just to show that you
haven't forgotten. What a tiny bit is expected of you compared with the price they have
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