THE YPRES TIMES
another old prison billet; parts of the walls were still standing. How I used to hunt
round these walls looking for nettles to use as food. Anneux was the worst spot
of my captivity, with reduced rations and burying six-months-old dead. I tried to
identify where we had buried some Welsh soldiers who had fallen in Bourlon Wood,
but the ground was now covered with crops.
The run through Fontaine into Cambrai renewed more memories. We crossed
the canal bridge, and there on the left stood an old friend by sight, but now a
reality, the estaminet Jean Bart." Cambrai was intact when I was last in it, but
there was now much evidence of the shelling and destruction it had undergone.
A large dinner in Cambrai, that I had promised myself for years, was a glorious
contrast to delousing and a drink of water. We went back by the Arras-Cambrai
road, another old landmark, to as far as Marquion. This place had been damaged
very little during the retreat, and even MINENWERFERin four-foot letters,
was on a building. There were more words, but Marcel accelerated to pass a car,
and the remainder was a blur.
At points along this road into Arras were various British cemeteries. Some
right up to the road, others in the fields, and more farther away as signboards
indicated, all to the fallen in the advance to victory. Much of the ground that we
had covered could be identified as battlefield, shell holes, barbed wire and stakes,
and parts of Nissen huts still being plentiful, and buildings that had been partly hit
by shell fire had still not been repaired. There does not seem to have been the
same kind of energy amongst the French to erase the mark of the invader as there
is with the Belgians around Ypres and other Belgian towns. I remember the
inhabitants near Liège, a few days after the Armistice, swept the dust of the
Germans' boots out of their houses into the street.
The next day we went by train to Douai, and caught the connection for Raismes
near Valenciennes, passing through the station of Wallers. When I had been in
Wallers I could see at a distance huge, sharp-sided pyramids with a helmet on top,
but now my curiosity was appeased; they were only slag heaps with a chute.
Except for the systematic destruction of coal mines, Raismes had not suffered
during the retreat, and it might have been only yesterday since I last set foot in the
town. Turning into a familiar side road, we came to the large factory in which I
had spent several months as a billet. It was now being used as a steel construction
works, but was temporarily closed owing to slackness of trade. Unfortunately we
could not get ina great disappointment to me, but we were interested to see the
same barbed wire defences on top of the high walls. We went into an estaminet
opposite and asked questions, but they had only come after the Armistice. A few
yards away we tried another, with much better luck. In the prisoner days we used
to pass it going to work in the forest.
Madame was very excited when I told her I had come to revisit; I think I must
have been the first to have done so. She said my plump appearance was a great
contrast to the hollow cheeks of those days. After a while I asked her where we
could obtain something to eat. She hastened to reply that they had only enough
for themselves, but we could get a meal at an hotel in the Market Place. A mis
understanding, I hope.
Back in the centre of the town, we caught an electric tram-train to St. Amand.
We used to do this journey about every three weeks for a wash, and I had always
envied seeing the trams whiz by filled with Jerries going on leave, whilst we shuffled
along in makeshift footwear. Now I was seeing the road from the tram and
getting quite a thrill out of it, and it only required a few German packs and rifles
on the luggage stand instead of the perambulators to complete the picture.
St. Amand was reached in a few minutes instead of the hours it took us to walk
there. We went the same route to the wash-houses, over the same old cobble
