THE YPRES TIMES
3
Ypres was really in the nature of a reserve line for the front which was some
2,000 yards beyond. Instead of being trenches there, as would normally have been
the case, the men were in cellars below the ruins. For cellars remained, the worst
bombardments cannot destroy them. The open streets were never safe from shell
fire and bullets. The men remained in the cellars except when called upon to relieve
those in the firing line or to retire to rest billets beyond Poperinghe. There was no
coming up to the surface for drill or for "divine service." F. Coy. lived in the old
town-prison, fourteen in a cell, deep down below the surface of the street in a silence
where no guns were ever heard. It was airless and grey, and murderers had scratched
their names on the walls in days gone by, but the soldiers were merry enough and
there was even a cinematograph theatre in one of the larger dungeons. There was
also a canteen. G. Coy. were in cellars on the Dry SwitchRight Flank Coy. were
in Rue Dixmude, opposite the Cathedraland Left Flank Coy. in Boulevard Malon,
near the railway station. The ways to the line were the St. Jean road, the Potijze
YPRES THE CITY OF MARTYRDOM
and Menin roads; the first started in the Northern part near Dead End, the other
two commenced at the Menin Gate which was near the Square and the Cloth Hall
and centre of the town. All three roads traversed the trenches and continued beyond
the German lines. The Menin Road was that on which the battalion had first come
under fire in October 1914.
An officer of the regiment wrote a vivid account of the Ypres to which they
returned
"It was only by devious passages that you could obtain access to the mysterious internal
chambers of the ramparts, centuries old. It was perfectly safe. In all our lines there was not a
safe dug-outthis had made it famous. And now it looked curiously seductive and homelike
There lay the remains of a late supperthere were two beds and two sets of pyjamasthere was
the book left open at the page half-readand there were the gramophone records lying in an
untidy heap beside the gramophone. The atmosphere was pungent with tobacco smoke, but warm
and comfortable. Outside the mist crept in, crept out and roundabout. Like a ghost, like
a wraith it stole along the dim streets whose secrets were buried beneath tons of bricks and
masonry, beneath heaps and heaps of ruins. At first you could see nothing in the filmy darkness
