THE YPRES TIMES
49
The next day the sun shone with midsummer splendour. Looking north from
Hill 60 we were able to see most of the ground over which the battle had ebbed
and flowed. It was as though a great plague had swept the countryside of
Nature's green and left a mantle of sordid mud. The gold of the sun and the
blue of the sky could not wipe out the great agony. Gaunt and grey the low hills
swept out before us. Below was the shattered remains of Square and Armagh
Woods. Lost and recaptured Observatory Ridge stood in front, its coppices full
of memories of hidden machine guns. Behind peeped out the higher ground of
Hills 61 and 62, to which the remains of Sanctuary Wood grimly clung. On the
right arises Mount Sorrel where blood-guilty earth and riven tree trunks defile
the blue sky. Behind, in striking- contrast, the green fields reach out toward the
Immortal City, encompassing this land of death. Graves and graveyards, with their
rough wooden crosses, mark the last resting place of officers and men, some
long forgotten, some but yesterday alive. Bunches of poppies might have drawn
their colour from the gallant blood which has drenched their roots. Scattered
beneath this innocent mantle are hundreds of shell holes and old trenches breathing
their odors -and memories of death. Torn and trampled equipment, empty
ammunition boxes, the remains of shattered bodies which human care and energy
had been unable to bury, all await the hand of Time, the healer, to cover them.
On the red road to Ypres lies the bodies of dead horses killed in a gallant effort
to bring ammunition to the barking guns. Look into Square Wood; it is a wood no
longer, only mud slowly crusting in the sun.
But against the clear sky the new Canadian Trenches run marked by sharp
outlines of red earth. They show that we again hold the lines of Mount Sorrel.
The experience has been a bitter one, the cost in life severe; yet the task is done.
Defeat was turned into victory.
I SPEAK not of those who keep our plays pure and our films fit for Public Adult
Exhibition, but of one whose duty it was to purge the private soldier's corre
spondence from anything likely to assist the enemy in his nefarious designs,
or to discourage the recruiting at home.
Rumour had it that our particular Censor was a schoolmaster in civilian life,
well practised in the art of cutting up schoolboys' exercises, or perhaps he was
a sub-editor. Whatever he was, he was no novice with the blue pencil. Before
long we began to hear of letters reaching home which started, My dear Mother
and ended Your loving son, Albert," but with precious little in between except
censorious scribbling. Specimens were even sent back to us through the post
from home to show what we had to expect.
Now we were in Ypresamong the first Territorials to tread that ground
which the Regular Army had already made famous. It was essential, in our
opinion, to get the great tidings home. The Censor was equally determined that
we should not. It was no use trying to get past him with such sentences as I
must not say where we are, but right in the centre of the City there is a priceless
old partly-worn Cloth Hall."
