Ae Appreciation
Major-General John F. O'Ryan, D.S.M., K.C.M.G.,
C.V.O., etc., President of the Ypres League in America,
Recalls War Service with Distinguished
British Soldier.
THE YPRES TIMES
By Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby, G.C.B., Etc.
'inci. ml j- i
FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT PLUMER is gone, his work well done, after fifty-
six years of service to King, Country and Empire. His was a rare personality.
Straightforward in purpose, regardless of self, he shrank from no task, though
the problems he encountered were formidable and numerous nor in any did he fail.
I was happy to come under him in May, 1915, succeeding him in the V Corps,
when he was given command of the Second Army. I continued serving under him
until October of that year, when I took over the Third,Army.
In those dark and dangerous days of the second battle of Ypres, I learned to admire
the stolid courage and cheerful confidence of my Army Commander. The courage was
innate, the confidence derived from thoughtful study and ripe experience of war in
many lands.
His later record is familiar historybattles in France and Italy, command on the
Rhine, successes as Governor and Commander-in-Chief in Malta, as High Commissioner
in Palestine.
Plumer is a name shining in our Nation's annals.
His ashes lie in the Warrior's Chapel of Westminster Abbey. To us he has
bequeathed a memory charged with Inspiration, guiding our steps as we follow upon the
road of Duty and Endeavour.
I PICKED up the New York Times and read of the death of Lord Plumer, the com
mander of the Second British Army, which in the World War held the Ypres Salient
against all that the might and valour of the German armies could do to flatten
it out.
The news came as a shock to me, as no doubt it was or will be to the veterans of
the Twenty-seventh or Thirtieth American Divisions, which served under the then
General Sir Herbert Plumer in the defence of the Ypres Salient in 1918.
It happened I was the youngest division commander in our army, and my corps
commander when I reported referred to flaming youth and said I would find a
