League Pilgrimage to Ypres.
230
THE YPRF.S TIMES
Menin Road collapsed near its junction with Cambridge Road at the point where the
Engineers of the 14th Division had constructed an aid post in 1915. The making good of
the road at this point has proved a big task for the road authorities, as the heavy rains of
the past month have caused a serious collapse completely blocking the road and tramway
which runs from Ypres to Menin, and necessitating the diverting of both tramway and
road into the fields on each side so as to pass the chasm which is 50 feet square and 40
feet deep, as shown in the photograph. It rather looks as if a gallery runs from this
dug-out under the centre of the roadway to Hooge. The original aid post at this point
apparently was greatly enlarged laterally and in depth at a subsequent period.
Nearly simultaneously with the falling-in of these British works under the Menin
Road, German galleries and tunnels collapsed at Clapham Junction between Hooge and
Gheluvelt, and later on between Hooge and Clapham Junction, where it has been found
necessary to open up hundreds of yards of road to permit of the removal of the vast
quantity of timber employed in the construction of the galleries.
W. G. P.
Three Wonderful Daysand Back to Blighty.
Our Tour of the Reborn Salient.
By Victor Hyde, M.C.
FORTY-NINE blue cornflowers paraded at Victoria Station in the early hours of
Saturday, August 1st, bound for the Immortal Salient. It was the Ypres League
pilgrimage, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, going out to see Those
they last saw at the same station in the early khakied dawn of fifteen years ago. One
woman was making her thirteenth pilgrimage, others their first. Age was sailing to
meet Youth, for
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember Them."
For three days from August 1st till the seventeenth anniversary of the declaration
of war we remembered Them. That every pilgrim completed his and her little pil
grimage, mostly in the Salient, a few in France, without hitch or disappointment, was
entirely due to the unflurried organization and aid of Captain de Trafford, who, whether
finding" transport, assembling his party, or giving friendly counsel, proved himself a
master leader and a great pal.
Ypres was reached shortly after seven o'clock on Saturday evening, and a leisured
(and thirsty) view of Skindles and the Continentalwas enjoyed while a few hundred
Belgians and British were tortuously passed through a narrow single exit from la gare
an old Belgian custom.
Billets, such was the temporary call on the limited accommodation of Wipers,
were spread over the city, some at Skindles, some at the Splendid and Britannique, and
a few in private houses, with the two hotels focal points for rationing and feeding. From
first to last, there were no complaints," and an orderly officer would have had a cushy
time. v\<
Two coaches took almost the entire party on a Sunday afternoon tour of the Salient
the morning had been left to individual inclinationevery foot of ground we passed
