THE YPRES TIMES
181
Another village appears. And slowly is left behind us, with its Utopian old barns
and cowsheds where one might sleep. Young Whitely, a sturdy little lad from a York
shire woollen mill, is set up on the captain's horse. The officers relieve staggering men
of their rifles.
We have passed through more villages. They were so profoundly asleep that they
didn't know we passed through like phantoms.
We have taken off our caps from our wet steaming hairwe have unbuttoned our
greatcoats and tunics and cardigans and shirts and vests. Sweat trickles in runlets
over our flesh in the keen cold early morning as we trudge along in the silent gloom,
along a bleak grey road with an indefinite expanse in front and at the right and at the
left. We trudge along in pain.
I remember the little Somme village of Marcelcave on a peaceful sunny afternoon
in March, igrö.So sunny and warm is the weather that the bareness of the trees seems
incongruous. The platoon is in single file in front of a large dixie of good brown tea,
dumped in the middle of the narrow street. Some are already served, and are strolling
away. Before the others have had theirs an order comes to Fall in The others
are compelled to cease waiting. Thirstily they stick their empty mess-tins in their
packs, and very soon we are marching away. We pass through the village squarewith its
four sides of plane treesin which, lately, in the evenings our band played happy music
while the villagers and Tommies were smoking and sitting and talking and strolling and
drinking. We pass the estaminet where, last night, I drank wine with boon com
panionsbottles of it. Madame is standing at the door sadly, waving her white hand
kerchief and calling out Bon chance! Bon chancedespairingly, as though pitting
her good wishes against huge inevitable ruthlessness.
The German offensive is launched against us.We are straggling wearily in retreat,
not having slept for days and nights. We have discarded much of our equipment.
Officers and men from various regiments of the Fifth Army, each wearing high upon his
sleeves near the shoulders a diamond-shaped piece of cloth of green or blue or red or
yellow or of various other shapes and colours, straggle along mixed. A shirt-sleeved
gun-crew is seen in a green field where there are cows, loading and firing with feverishly
desperate automatism. Later, their last shell expended, they are clinging to their gun
which, bumping and jumping behind galloping horses, is being dragged along the road
furiously in a cloud of dust.
And young Whitely, who had given me one of his most delicious tinned kippers
from home, while we were in deep underground cellars in Ypres, near the Grande Place,
last wintera survivor said of him afterwards, that he had stuck a big Prussian had
jabbed his bayonet up into his ribs had tugged at it imprisoned in the bones of the
supine Prussian had pressed his small foot on the big body while he tugged had fired
bullets into it to loosen the bayonet, cursing and swearing frenziedly as he tuggeduntil
a German revolver-bullet in his face stilled the curses on his bloody lips. Young
Whitelyso gentle, so smilingly round-faced after his tot of rum when he crawled into
our "funk-hole" in the front line, singing. Those others the bottles of wine
with them under the plane trees.
And we that are left grow old."
Sidney G. Knott.
