THE YPRES TIMES
4i
that it attracts and fascinates those who were privileged to serve with them and
return to peace when the trial was over? We loved those pals of ours, and we
cannot forsake them. Comradeship brings us back in homage to their greatness,
and because we are their brothers who can never forget.
To any old soldier-men who would make such a journey, I would offer valuable
advicecut the tourist element right out of your party. In their eagerness to see
the sights, they will take you away from the particular spots which will thrill you
to the marrow, when you put on memory's spectacles and see those old places in
war-time guise.
For this reason, we two made the pilgrimage alone, as representatives of the
6th Pals K.S.L.I.
On the journey from Ostend to Ypres, we thought of the thousands of German
soldiers who must have passed over those very metals to face us in the Salient.
The evening of Saturday, prior to Whit Sunday, found us in Ypres, eager to tread
once again those roads of memory. Our billet was near to the Menin Gate on the
eastern side of the famous rampart wall, and, after dinner, this eloquent Memorial
to simple greatness claimed our first attention. We studied its columns of names,
wondered at the immensity, the dignity of its architecture, and then we thought of
the Menin Gate as we knew it in the old daysthat pulverized, shell-battered portal
to Ypres. No living thing loitered at the Menin Gate then. One simply hurried
through and hopedyes, and prayedfor safety, for here truly was the very gate
of death.
The striking thing about this and all other memorials to British courage in
Flanders is the absence of any swashbuckling glorification of war.
Looking upwards to the beautifully sculptured lion on the east side of the gate,
I pictured him rather as a watchful sentry, gazing across the old battle-front, not
in defiance, but as though he would say, "These are my beloved boys. I guard
their blessed memory and this shrine to their courage."
Then that simple inscription, To the Armies of the British Empire who stood
here from 1914 to 1918, and to those of their dead who have no known grave."
Simple, yet how much it means; stood here and who can estimate the courage
demanded by that glorious stand? We feel a glow of pride that we were privileged
to help in that defence.
Leaving the Gate, we strolled quietly in the gathering darkness up that road of
suffering and trial, the Menin Road. Of course, in the old days one didn't stroll;
one ran if the load one carriedincluding the stuff they hung on the P.B.I.
permitted. A joker in my old battalion once said, Thank goodness we belong to
the light infantry, otherwise we might have had something to carry." Old Fritz
knew that road to the very inch. A motor car swung up the road, and my pal
remarked on the resemblance the headlight gleams had to the old Very lights.
What memories of the old days that little stroll brought back—struggling
carrying-parties, lorries, guns, ammunition columns, front-line reliefs. Each night,
right through the hours of darkness, a ceaseless stream of traffic, and each night
the enemy extracted his toll of precious lives. The writer recalled a night in June,
1916, when returning from nine terrible days on Railway Wood, we came upon the
welter of casualtieswounded, dead and dyingthe result of the gallant stand
made by our Canadian brothers in the Battle of Mount Sorrel. Some part of the
German forces actually reached Hell Fire Corner during that desperate struggle.
This was not one of the official battles of Ypres, but it certainly was one of the
bloodiest battles that ever took place in the Salient. The story is told in a little
book entitled, In the Ypres Salient," obtainable from the Ypres League. The
6th K.S.L.I. were in Railway Wood on the immediate left of the Canadians, a low-
lying marshy piece of ground, in which it was impossible to dig trenches, separating
the Canadians from the K.S.L.I. Many wounded Canadians were carried to
