5 tli London
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THE YPRES TIMES
In the magnificent fifteenth century Cloth Hall part of the tower and
entrance remained, but all the faqade, with its hundreds of carved statues, was a
pile of rubbish.
We crossed what was the square and we were now near the Menin Gate, but
we were warned by the traffic control sentry not to go through, as the casualties
that day had been exceptionally heavy.
We therefore took shelter behind what remained of the wall of a house, and we
could see through the opening in the ramparts, which is called the Menin Gate,
the flash of our guns in front and hear the roar of those behind us.
The shells were coming over thick and fast, occasionally hitting the old fortifi
cation, which is a rampart on either side of the gate 40 ft. high, with a ditch at
the bottom filled with water.
In these ramparts holes have been dug, and hundreds of men take refuge there
when shelling takes place. Last week a number of officers in a battalion head
quarters mess were sealed up and suffocated by a Hun heavy dropping right on
the exit.
We could not see a living soul except an occasional traffic control sentry and
the sentries posted to prevent anyone entering the ruined public building.
While all this bombardment was going on, two swans were calmly resting on
the water on part of the moat near the gate.
We were fortunate in finding a stray lorry which took us to where our horses
were, and, after some welcome beer and cigarettes, galloped home across the
sandy track.
That evening, soon after our arrival, Fritz sent over twenty 'planes and
dropped tons of bombs from 9.30 to 2 a.m.
About twelve midnight he got the huge ammunition dump in my area, the
contents of which were worth about £100,000, which was what he was after, and
the flames and smoke filled the sky and lit up the country for miles.
Thus ended a perfect day. I paid other visits to Ypres and rode through the
Menin Gate on more than one occasion during the Passchendaele battles, but it
did not impress me so much as my first visit to that historic spot.
ON Friday, August 21st, a party of fifteen members and friends of the Old Comrades
Association met at St. Pancras at 9.45 p.m. to catch the night train en route
for Tilbury, Dunkerque, and that mysterious region which was known for so long
as the Western Front.
What a glorious sense of the old comradeship was rekindled during that journey
How readily the old jokes, the old songs and the old familiar nicknames came back to us
as train and boat sped us towards our destination. The first stop from Dunkerque was
Hazebrouck and then a splendid view of Kemmel and the Mont des Cats told us we were
fast approaching the Salient.
Nine o'clock on Sunday morning found us detraining at Ypres and an excellent
breakfast was soon being enjoyed at Skindles Hotel. The rest of the morning was spent