THE YPRES TIMES
150
reared its jagged and gaunt towers to the sky in a sort of protest to the heavens against
the destructive powers of man, the Menin Road had been rebuilt but the town and its-
surroundings still presented a picture of desolation and ruin as dismal and depressing
as possible.
My companion's War experiences had not included fighting on the Western front,,
so that it was interesting to watch his reaction to our surroundings. We spent our day
in Ypres visiting cemeteries, Tank cemetery and others in the neighbourhood, memorials
to various regiments that had won fame in the countless local battles against picked
Divisions of the finest army that ever went to war (Marshal Foch's own descrip
tion of the German Army).
Finally we put up for the night in the only accommodation that then existed, a
varnished wooden structure that formed a comfortable hotel in the centre of the town.
And then happened the remarkable experience which is the subject of my story it
is entirely a true story in every particular.
The following personal details are essential if what I am about to tell is to be fully
appreciated. The writer is not an imaginative individual. He does not readily believe
in the mystical and declines to give any serious credit to such matters as are investigated
by Societies for Psychical Research. Such phenomena as Ghosts and their manifesta
tions, communications from the departed and such things have no part in his mental
make-up. He regards those who give serious consideration to all such things (whether
they be distinguished men of science, eminent writers of fiction, or uninstructed persons
with little knowledge of the rules of evidence or of the demands of commonsense) as
deluded and possibly unbalanced people who allow their credulity to mislead them.
With this personal explanation let me relate in simple language what happened to
me on that summer night in Ypres in 1920.
After a good if simple dinner my friend and I retired to bed, our minds undoubtedly
attuned to thoughts of many astonishing memories of the warto use the jargon ot
psychology our minds were likely to be extremely receptive of external influences.
I should think, without knowing positively, that my friend is more imaginative, orr
if you will, more inclined to be receptive than I, and yet nothing came to him. Neither
of us suffer from impaired digestions.
So rarely does the writer, the soundest of sleepers, dream that every dream which
comes to him is vivid and pictorial in the extreme and remains permanently
embedded in his memory. On this summer night a dream came, vivid and unmistak
able in detail, picturing a War incident which I certainly never saw with my eyes. A
line of kite-balloons was to be seen against the sky, an enemy aeroplane attacked them,
firing incendiary bullets, one of the balloons caught fire and sank down blazing, the
observer left the basket in the regulation manner bv parachute, the parachute caught
fire and the observer crashed to the ground and was killed.
All of this scene was presented to me in my dream as vividly as if it had been
displayed on the screen of a cinema. It did not awaken me.
To appreciate-the singularity of this incident it is necessary to realize that the
average number of my dreams is certainly less than one a year. It is also a fact that
I must have watched more than a score of kite-balloons attacked by enemy aeroplanes
and set on fire by incendiary bullets. I saw the kite-balloon near Gugunci in Macedonia
attacked over and over again by enemy airmen and shelled repeatedly, and the balloon
behind Bethel (Beitin) in Palestine set upon by Turkish airmen. I saw very many
British kite-balloons and German Sausages set on fire by aeroplane attack. In
every single case flames darted upwards from the top of the balloon and the parachute
decended safely long before any fire could endanger the flimsy white umbrella."
Why then did this vivid dream come to me? Why did I on the one night that
I slept in Ypres see in a dream a vivid picture of an incident that I had never seen with
my eyes or in a picture?
