Memories
THE YPRES TIMES
By H. Gregory, M.M.,
Author of Never Again (Stockwelt), 3/6 Nett., and
Prisoners of War, a Play in 4 Acts (Stockwell) 2/- Nett.
ANOTHER year. Each succeeding year brings back memories. To realise that
it is now sixteen years since the last shots were fired across No Man's Land."
As each anniversary comes round we pay homage to our Glorious dead, around
the Cenotaphs throughout the Empire.
Everything stilled. Not a sound to be heard. Then as the pent up feelings of the
relatives of the Glorious departed, the ones who failed to return, sobs are heard to
break the silence.
A poor mother shedding tears for her departed son. A wife for a loved and
devoted husband. A sweetheart for her lover. Poor little orphans weep for their
father. All in sympathy and accord with the fallen in the Great War.
What the glorious dead lived through, we the living survivors of the Great War
know, and this is the symbol of what Armistice Day should stand for. To the memory
of the fallen. The Glorious dead. What hardships and sufferings they endured in
the name of freedom so that the rising generation might live.
Armistice Day is their day. A reminder of the years 1914-18 in solemn remembrance
Every respect is due to their memory. Great and noble deeds were done. The
greatest sacrifices endured, and the ex-serviceman as he stands at the Cenotaphs to
celebrate another anniversary to his fallen comrades, his mind will run back through
the years and in a few fleeting moments he will visualise the battle front again.
He will smell the mud. The stench of the powder will again be in his nostrils.
The strain of the waiting, as they linger for the signal to go over the top, will again
come back to him.
The nerve racking bombardment will again flit across his mind. Again he will be
reminded of wading in the trenches up to the thighs in mud and water, slithering and
sliding as they tried to get a grip on the duckboards underneath.
With a cold chill running down his back he will remember the terrible winter when
he was practically frozen to death, and of the thaw that followed leaving him to wallow
about in a sea of mud and water, always facing obstacles, but never beat. Super men
every man of them that nothing could daunt.
As I throw my mind back on this one day of the year I cannot forget my first glimpse
of war. Marching in a storm. Laying down in the side of the road to rest, with the
water rushing past, sleep overtaking us. A little latèr as we approached where the
Somme offensive commenced we saw, as each Veery light went up, the trees
standing out stripped of every branch and cut down by shells, standing there
in all their stark reality. Shell holes everywhere, and a sea of mud and water
Barbed wire twisting this way and that. Desolation and destruction all around, giving
a weird and uncanny appearance as each Veery light ascended, lit this scene dimly for
a few seconds, and then inky blackness once again. Later the front line where men had
to endure ten thousand Hell's. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year.
The years rolled on and there seemed no end. Endurance and sacrifice being patiently
borne every minute of the day in the glorious name of freedom.
The Glorious dead have built a noble monument which should be respected by all,
and as the adolescent grow up to years of intelligence and understanding they will
