Ypres Sanctuary of Comradeship.
236
THE YPRES TIMES
Wood and taking in Havrincourt, Flesquieres, Rocquigny and through Bapaume to the
Somme area. The weather on this occasion was true to type, for it rained hard the whole
time, but the spirits of the party rose accordingly and the old songs were sung right
lustily as we passed through Pozières, Warlencourt, Thiepval, Flers and so back to Arras.
After a good dinner, at which many toasts were drunk, we caught the night train back to
Dunkerque and arrived in London at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning.
The whole of the arrangements for this most enjoyable trip were made by Captain
G. E. de Trafford, Secretary of the Ypres League, who very kindly accompanied the
party throughoutin fact, he became one of us. The motor tours were under the
supervision of Mr. C. J. Parminter, the League's representative at Ypres, and to both
these gentlemen we owe a great debt of gratitude. Had they been members of our own
unit they could not have done more to make the whole trip such a glorious success.
W. J. Franklin.
Note.In connection with the arrangements of this tour, the Secretary of the Ypres League
wishes to express his grateful thanks to Mr. H. R. Mack, Honorary Secretary of the 5th London Field
Ambulance Ö.C.A., for his fine co-operation, and heartily welcomes those gentlemen who kindly joined
up as members of the League at the conclusion of the tour, and at the kind request of Mr. Mack, the
League was honoured to accord collective membership to the Old Comrades Association."
By Graham Seton.
(Lieut.-Colonel G. S. Hutchison, D.S.O., M.C.)
Author of The W Plan," "Footslogger," etc.
YPRES, almost personified, spiritually if not in flesh and blood, in its stricken
tower of masonry, the Cloth Hall. Out from the Menin Gate north-east, east,
south-east, to the extremities of the fan-shaped SalientLangemarck,
Passchendaele, Broodseinde, Gheluvelt, Ploegsteert. The Salient itself, pock-marked
and obscene with shell holes. The tree tops of Polygon Wood, or Inverness Copse,
once safe harbour for pigeons, giving shade to peasant lovers, hanging as crazy scare
crows, their broken branches waving in mockery. Those trees, swift landmarks against
a star-shell-lighted horizon, assume fantastic human form, buffoons on stilts, the leaves
at the twig-ends a feathery motley with yhich to crown man's vengeance upon nature
at the zenith of her summer glory. Roads, pitted, ugly with splintered baulks of timber,
their sides piled with stinking carcases, mere tracks over which tramp silently ten
thousand men going east, and, coming west, limp and trickle as many thousand more.
Among them are horses, hairy as Highland cattle, dragging guns axle-deep in mud across
the wasted fields and macadamless roads of Potijze or Zonnebeke, in bitter wind and
driving rain, with no other light to brighten their journey into the unknown than the
quick-cut flash of bursting cordite or that of the fog-veiled star-shell. Those who live
and have their being in the Salient remain the audience of a sublime orchestra, whose
crescendo of shrieking shell and thunder of gun intermittently thrills and appals, and
whose pianissimo of distant cry coming over the sky-line at dawn lulls them to fitful
slumber.
How we, who, through long years have known the ebb and flow of the Salient, who
have witnessed the dissolution of its mdnuments into dust, and have seen its woods
and pastures incredibly churned and twisted, rent and upheaved to make a diplomatic
holiday how we, who for all time will be haunted by Ypres, have hated, yet with equal
