THE YPRES TIMES
87
the senses and one that was forgotten when there was a sea between us and that
patch of tortured earth.
How strange to experience it again after fifteen years
Time had taken its toll of me, and memories of the Salient were very deep
down, only coming to the surface, when sudden, unexpected meetings with old
comrades brought a gleam to the eye, and a flood of reminiscence to the tongue.
I was wandering round Poole Harbour, that lovely stretch of water comparable
to Naples Bay, and so far away was the Army that no thought of a Sergeant
Major's comments on my dress ever came to mind. Khaki tunic, ammunition belt,
water bottle and bayonet had been replaced by tennis shirt (outrageously open at
the neck) loose and comfortable flannel bags, and blazer." There was no
peaked cap, and indeed no cap at all, and the light south-westerly wind ruffled my
greying hair, as it ruffled the thousand pennants of the yachts rocking gently on
the green waters.
It was a clean and refreshing breeze, with a tang of the salt that it had
borrowed from the English Channel, and it combined with the blue sky, and the
bright sun to produce a feeling of peace and contentment as I crossed the swing
bridge leading to Hamworthy Island.
There was no thought of the stagnant mud of Hooge or Gheluvelt, as I
watched the swift waters running along the quay sides, or of poisoned air, as I
sniffed the breeze into my lungs.
Suddenly my nostrils distended and a look of disgust must have crossed my
tanned face. Borne on the back of the invisible wind had come, an odour,
langorous and sickly, that stirred up some memory that had been buried for
many a year, and which was difficult of identification.
A heavier puff of wind brought a stronger reminder, and then conviction, that
from the direction of jolly Sandbanks, and pretty Swanage, and those lovely
Purbeck Hills was coming the smell of Ypres
For a few seconds Poole with its ancient houses, and its harbour alive with
shipping faded away, and in its place was a pock-marked swamp, with a few tree-
trunks, lolling drunkenly at various angles, and a confused clutter of rusty wire,
squat concrete buildings and a number of silent and mournful tanks, deep in
clinging mud. There was a main road running out of a ruined town, with tracks
of heavy timber radiating from it in all directions, and over the whole district a
pall of smoke and rising from it an odour precisely similar to that now sweeping
along from the noble, peaceful Dorset coast.
A nausea overcame me and a desire to retreat followed by a determination to
discover the cause of this evil imposition of a forgotten horror on a pleasant
holiday. A smart walk for a quarter-mile revealed that the sense of smell had
not been in error.
On the pleasant banks of the harbour, facing the pine covered cliffs of
Bournemouth was a graveyard of War. Masses of torn and shattered guns, rolls
of rusty wire and shell cases, tin-hats, old Lewis guns and rifles, portions of sub
marines encrusted with barnacles and weeds from ocean beds, limbers with
shattered - wheels, wrecked lorries, and the thousand and one battered remnants
left on a battlefield after the battle has died away.
From the heap of filthy junk came the unmistakeable smell of Ypres, and for
a few seconds I surveyed the scene with twitching nostrils and a mind full of
memories of those long-dead months. Then lugging a pipe out of a hip pocket,
and filling and lighting it, I turned tail and hurried back to the town, puffing
furiously, and determining to have a long swim in clean, cold English sea-water
at the earliest possible moment.
A. L.
