A Subaltern at Ypres, 1914.
4
The Yfres Times.
Although M. Colaert had expressed the wish that his funeral should be of a very-
simple character, the whole of the population of Ypres, including the British colony,
assembled in the main streets to pay their final respects. A solemn requiem was sung
in the Church of St. James, and the remains were subsequently interred in the family
vault in Ypres Town Cemetery, where Prince Maurice of Battenberg, King George's
cousin, and many other British soldiers, who fell in the Salient, are also buried.
M. Colaert was 83 years of age, and left two daughters, both of whom received part
of their education at Maynooth, Ireland. At one time he was a member of the Chamber
of Deputies.
ten
During the whole day of October 30th, 1914, we watched line after line and mass
after mass of blue-coated Germans pouring over the skyline and collecting in the woods
some 600 yards in front of and slightly below us I wondered to myself how we could
possibly hope to stop them, and I wondered too, at what point their main attack would be
made. All that night (October 30th-3ist) we heard their two-note trumpets going, with
whistles and shouts in German of Forward, forward! They were flashing lamps freely,
and evidently assembling themselves for the next morning's attack. The line my regiment
was holding that night was tactically wrong in every way, and I have never discovered
why we took it up, and under whose orders. My platoon of A Company was on the left
in touch with, and mixed up with, the Scots Guards the line held by the company on my
right, D Company, went out almost at right angles to ours. This rough diagram explains:
I said that the line was tactic
ally wrong nevertheless during
the night it trapped the over-
eager and self-confident Germans.
Apparently they had no idea that
the thick hedge was held. We
had dug ourselves in at the foot
of it and fired between the roots
at the bottom. When day broke
•on that never-to-be-forgotten
morning of October 31st there
were the Germans, quite a nice
little crowd of them, all dug in
in a deep but untraversed trench
some 200 yards from D Com
pany of my regiment, and facing it.
We, A Company, were being most terribly shelled, and my hole, about 5 feet deep and wide
enough to sit in, was half filled with water, and thick with smoke and the reek of lyddite.
Barge chunks of shell were sticking in the lip of my hole all round, and it seemed like
suicide to get out. I took a quick look out, and there they wereover 100 Germans quite
at our mercy. I told my men not to fire and hurried off to find Captain Wickham, com
manding the company of Scots Guards on our left, to try to get a machine-gun. The
Scots Guards' machine-gun officer was soon unearthed and one of his guns quickly placed
in the gap of the hedge. The machine-gunner was beside himself with excitement, and
put a whole belt down the trench at 150 yards range. The result was appalling, indeed
almost disgusting I could see large pieces of the enemy being literally blown off. We
