THE YPRES TIMES
37
through the system and sink down, a stick of chocolate or a cigarette between the
lips, coughing, retching. Dying. Gassed.
And there beyond barbarity men clung to their posts. What purposeless futility.
I loved the Calvary of Passchendaele. It lured me.
From Tyne Cotts I would wander towards Broodseinde Ridge, and thence north
as dawn broke along the front of my posts, so difficult to discover. I liked to see my
men at daybreak and give them some word of good cheer. And they liked to see me.
Sometimes a sniper would pot at my wandering figure. I would amble quickly
then over the maze of the cone, and drop from view beside a hole, worm my bellied
NEAR PASSCHENDAELE.
way to another point, rise and shake my fist at the Boche, and pay another call.
I ended my journey along the frontal posts usually at Passchendaele Church.
In the stillness of dawn I could sink with fatigue in reverie, even as one may doze
over a log fire, to be recalled by the crack of a bullet, just as a pine log spits and brings
the dreamer to reality. The Church had been razed to the ground. My post lay
among its gathered bricks rebuilt above a vault, which served as sanctuary for the
troops holding the eastern apex of the Salient.
They always gave me a cup of tea at the Church, thus expressing the benevolence
of Christianity. Man drank anything hot with gratitude. Even water, heavily
