238
THE YPRES TIMES
How many cameos of that comradeship of endeavour do we not remember From
the gay lights of Poperinghe, the estaminets of Abeele, the quiet lakes of Dickebusch
and Zillebeke, often lashed to fury by shell fire and from the battles which raged in
Sanctuary Wood, Stirling Castle, even before the honeycombed ramparts of the city.
I think of one from many.
The sun glares down upon the trenches. It is the first day of summer after many
rains. In the front line men are washing here one with his periscope perched on the
parados shaves off his three weeks' growth another, naked to the waist, stretches his
fine young limbs in the morning air. Red-haired Jock Ginger is busy with his
chanter crooning a little group to slumber and to happy memories of burn and glen.
Only the sentry, with his one eye glued to the canvas-covered lookout hole in the parapet,
appears to take interest in the life beyond the meshes of the barbed wire. The jagged
tower of the Ypres Cloth Hall keeps silent watch.
A green and yellow cloud belches forth from the enemy's line. It wends its way,
sometimes snakelike and sinuous, sometimes unrolling itself in wide ethereal fronds,
or in massed blossom opening like the petals of a flower.
A mighty uproar, crash and noise. Rifles are seized. The trench is filled with dust
and smokered, green, black, yellow. The rifle spits here and there. A machine gun
fitfully opens fire. And all the time slowly creeps on a great green cloud. It seems to
roll over the edge of the parapet. Wild-eyed men, who feverishly work the bolts of rifles,
are gripped in its octopus embrace. What was once Oxford Street is now a shambles
some dead, others choked with gas fumes, others heaped with tattered clothing and
mangled bodies lie gasping in the wreckage of a strong point. With a final wail of
agony the chanter falls from the hand of Jock. His red hair will never glisten in the sun
again his face is grey, his hair clotted and matted in a dull crimson. It is wardeadly
war.
The front line has gone. The enemy pours across No Man's Land, and with shrill
cries enters our line and proceeds to rush through the communication trench to our
support line. But resolute men are here. Headed by their officer, they strike across
the open space between the support and the front line. It seems to be suicide, but the
party attains its end. On vous aura They have them in the back The enemy
is trapped he turns, but it is too late. Men sway backwards and forwards in the yellow
clay soil. It is war to the knifean eye for an eye and a tooth for a toothbayonet,
bludgeon and bomb.
A second wave of the enemy pours down upon the trench, but its saviours are there.
A Feldwebe is left jerking on a strand of wire, the stomach blown through his back by
a rocket from a Very light pistol at ten yards' range. The machine gun speaks again.
The line is held. The Tower of Ypres still keeps its eastern watch.
Go back to Ypres if you wish to recapture part of your former self. Tread the
pavé roads. Plant the heel firmly in the muddy soil. As you hear the squelch, or
nailed boot echoing upon cobble stones, where you stand will become peopled, and your
horizon broken by a forest of rifles and tin hats all askew. Walk swiftly across the fields
as if expectant of a barrage of gas or a five point nine morning hate. Then slip the
fingers beneath the shirt buttons on the breast. You will feel animal sweatand you
will wonder as you withdraw your fingers, as you did before, if this warm wetness may
not be that of blood. The Salient is very silent now. But if you stick your fingers in
your ears you hear again all those sounds, so similar, yet so distinct, which for the
initiated spelt death close at hand, or some mighty metallic atom hurrying safely over
head. And in the darkness, or with closed eyes, you will see visionsBritish soldiers
huddled close for physical warmth and spiritual reinforcementmen from the blue
haze of an English countryside, wrestling with death in Battle Wood bare-legged boys
from shingled coves playing in the waters of Dickebusch Canadians breasting the
