232
THE YPRES TIMES
Other halting-places were Hills 60 and 62, and the Canadian Memorial at Vancouver
Cross Roads, north of St. Julien.
The last time I was in St. Julien, in 1927, a Canadian officer, returned like myself,
showed me where the first Canadian V.C. was won. The place is now an estaminet,
where they will sell you doubtful bière for a few sous, and Monsieur expectorate at
unnecessarily frequent intervals on to tiled floor.
The time before that, when St. Julien was a risk and a wreck, German snipers were
making a short range target of meand missing me.
Yet, once, where Beastliness stalked, and Red Ridges, the Wind is in the Corn.
And there are poppies again and bluebells and roses and wildflowers.
They are not lonely Not with these and Russet Ridges, and Gold. A Reborn
Salient's Dead are never lonely and the breeze is in the corn, brother, the breeze
is in the corn.
Yes, there is a Salient still and it is East of Ypres. There will always be a
Salient, and it will always be East of Ypres. A Garden of Rest Cemeteries where
was bloodshed. Crosses where was Carnage. Just Resting
We saw our Salient sleepy in the sun, and straggly, as before the shells came, and
the guns. Nature has nurtured her, bosomed and fed her. Her fields were red her
fields are green. Her spires were razed her spires are raised again. Her trees
were trunks, but still, praise be, some trunks are ghosts. And leave us poppies in
your lanes, leave us poppies in your lanes Oh mayn't we pick poppies in your lanes
This young-old Salient held the majority of the pilgrims on Bank Holiday Monday,
the rest joining the day run to Arras. At Ploegsteert and Loos, on the outward journey,
a mother, whose two sons were killed on the same day, on different parts of the front,
found their names on the memorials to the missing, and carried home with her vivid
pictures of the monuments erected in their honour. It was the first visit she had been
able to make.
At Vimy Ridge we descended the depths of Grange Tunnel and saw, some of us
again, the names carved and scrawled on the dank, stone walls, the old wire beds and
headquarters, where chits were written and zero hours fixed, and the dud 5'9 that tore
through the tunnel without exploding.
The German roadside cemetery at Maison Blanche, where over 30,000 are buried
beneath black wooden crosses, two to a cross, head to head, is another ineffaceable
memory of the same day. Try to imagine 30,000 black crosses A setting almost
without finality.
Nightly, at the Menin Gate, we paraded with the British Legion's men and
the British Legion's women, for the sounding of the Last Post." Each evening, the
old familiar call, bidding a warrior's good night. And They hear it54,000 that
marched out and never marched back, with names and not gravesyes, They hear it.
And as, back through the Menin Gate, dying bugles echo bravely, challenging, into the
crisp twilight air of the Salient, and They know They are not forgotten, a Great Quietude
mantles the Salient, and Everything is Very Still.
The morrowand Blighty. The writer with two Prussian Guards' helmets-
1916 vintageGerman officer's sword, British ditto, seven shell cases and two bayonets,
everyone with a very deep debt of gratitude to Captain de Trafford for the quiet efficiency
which marked our trip, from the moment of departure to the hour of return.
And I am sure I am voicing the thoughts of others when I say that those, including
myself, who were meeting him for almost the first time, left for home feeling they had
made a very staunch and a very true friend.
Next year we want not forty-nine but 149. It should not be difficult, and the
earlier you register the happier will the League be.
