THE YPRES TIMES
173
cold and perhaps hungryvisualized the future in your mind's eye and asked yourself
if the powdered rubble which lay behind you would ever again assume the lines of
ordered, well-built streets, wherein the chatter of care-free citizens would once again
be heard
If you are an ordinary man, you never asked yourself these questions. There were
more pressing things to do than merely ruminate over abstract problems. The Sickle,
for instance, was for ever being held over your head, and your futuresomething of real
consequencemight end at any moment.
But Ypres has arisen from its ashes, and its citizens do go about their business with
the shadow of war relegated to the limbo of almost forgotten things, and you, plain,
ordinary you, made the thing possible. You came from Calgary and Melbourne,
Dublin and Dundee, London and Brum," and all the other places which furnished the
Salient with its human barriers, possessed of something much more effective and vital
than the lethal weapons of war. You had courage, and it was courage alone that barred
the door to Ypres. Men may talk of trenches and strong points," and even lay great
stress on the good generalship of our leaders, but none of those things would have
prevailed without the high moral and physical courage of the untrained youth of the
Empire who stood solid before the ruins, stemming every rush and cpunteracting every
move that was set in motion against them.
Photo[The Imperial War Museum, Crown Copyright.
THE YPRES PRISON.
The Salient may have had more disadvantages than any other part of the line,
but, on the other hand, it had its compensations, even if they were of a minor kind.
It will be difficult for you who have trodden its debris-strewn streets, with the smell
of death for ever in your nostrils, to associate the place with anything in the nature of
worldly compensations. But there were one or two things which made the soldier's
life tolerable in his off moments in this rather dreaded part of the line.
I remember our Corps Commander, General Sir Aylmer Hunter Weston, soldier
like and eloquent, with a great flow of well-phrased words, visiting us at B Camp
near Poperinghe. We were paraded, and the General fired off his customary address
Officers, non-commissioned officers and men," he said, raising himself up in his
saddle to give effect to his words, I bring you good news. You will be pleased to know
you are returning to the Somme, where I hope you will get your own back for that
cutting up you got on July 1st."
There was a fidget in the ranks behind me, and the voice of McDonald, of Fife, broke
a tense silence—" Nae mair hot doughnuts, lads. Albert again, with bully and biscuits."
Tough, muscular coal-heaver and full-blooded fighting man that he was, the Somme did
not appal him, but the loss of the doughnuts was a bitter thought.
