Impressions of Passchendaele
THE YPRES TIMES 111
By W. R. Bird.
GRAF HOUSE is a splendid farm in the low ground below Passchendaele. I went
eagerly in '32 to see what manner of place it might be in civilized years, and
spent the day in wonderment. There was scarcely a feature to be recognized.
The pillboxes were gone, vanished, with no trace of their site, or of the machine gun
emplacements near them, or the gouged trenches leading up the ridge. There is nothing
left at Passchendaele but graves of the men who died there.
Passchendaele means, to the soldier who fought there, more tragic memories than
any other part of the line, pictures burned in his brain, never to be erased. Men who
cannot recall the name of the village at which they spent weeks of rest can tell you
how many burned lorries they saw on the old plank road that dreadful night they went
in," and the exact markings on the pillbox opposite the shell hole they occupied. There
was a frightfulness in those late autumn days more livid than any words can express,
a horror as heavy and almost as visible as the blanketing, clammy, soul-searching mists
that clung to every shell-tortured acre.
Memories. I can see now as plainly as then the dripping ruins of Ypres
as we huddled there that late October afternoon, listening to the big ones as they
Photo]
[Imperial War Museum Crown Copyright.
VIEW OF PASSCHENDAELE BATTLEFIELD, 1917, SHOWING DERELICT TANK
