THE YPRES TIMES
19
ON the 27th October, 1917, a date which I continue to remember as I do 1066,
our draft left Folkestone for Boulogne. I stood on deck gazing at the white
cliffs of Albion, thinking that I ought to feel regret proper to the occasion-
but I felt seasick instead. So I could have said with any perfervid patriot that I
was very eager to get to France.
We were posted to the 8th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, whose platoons
we found in barns scattered about the village of Moulle, near St. Omer. From the
distance came the dull boomings of the guns which we heard now for the first time
and wondered when we would be among them.
I had read in the newspapers about Passchendaele Ridge and, after a few days
at Moulle, that was where we went.
The "front line" is really an elongated shell-hole. In the enormous darkness
of the cold quiet night the noise of a solitary exploded shell echoes like the bang of
a door in a baronial giant's deserted gloomy hall. In front, on top, in the distance,
the faint "pop" of a Very light sounds from the German lines. This light, attached
to a little silken parachute, ascends, irradiating with whiteness an expanding circular
space on the ground. In its extending radiance which is creeping and revealing,
short tree trunks and branches, bare, black, broken, on what was once a road, are
like bony old women's arms stretched out to heaven in silent imprecation. Against
the penumbra, is some barbed wire. Hanging on it are effigies, awry and mute,
reminding me of the grotesque figures carried round London streets on November
the 5th to the shouts from little boys of "Guy! Guy! Guy!" Here and there the
ground bulges into a headbooted feetkhaki-covered arms. A man is lying on
his back with his knees up and his arms outstretched as though lazily reclining in a
field while on leave in the heat of a summer day.
The little silken parachute having come slowly down, the light sputters in a small
radius of incandescence on the ground then vanishes. The darkness blacks out the
sight of my eyes so that I am blind in the night. Rain commences to patter metallically-
sounding on my steel helmet. I am the sentry, and alone. The other fellows are
in their holes, one of them muttering uneasily in his cold damp huddled sleep. I
wish one of them would wake up and come out. It is about 3 o'clock. I have been
here since midnight. The plaintive buzzing "ping" of a bullet sounds overhead. The
rain continues to drizzle. The explosion of a distant shell sounds like a gentle tap
on a gong the thin circles of echo slowly ebb away.
IT is Chrismas Eve, the last Christmas Eve of the war. The earth is covered
with a thick frost. The darkness echoes with the staccato sounds of a distant
machine-gun. Through the air the spate of bullets speedsswish ping ping ping
ping! We wait for the East Yorks to relieve us. We wear sheep-skins or
leather jerkins over our overcoats. Instead of puttees we have sandbags round
Our legs untidily. We wait fearfully, "nervily," stamping on the ground and
banging together our gloved hands. Our gloves are without fingers, they are of
rough white leather and are attached to a long white tape which hangs round our
necks and over our shoulders. In the darkness the lighted ends of our cigarettes
glow.
