THE YPRES TIMES
242
it was never used for mere holding of the line," always fattened-up like turkeys
for some show," just been in a bloody battle up at Ypres
We arrived at Boisleaux, as near as I can recall, late in the afternoon. It was getting
dark we discovered it was some little distance to Blaireville, so we decided to spend
the night in the Y.M.C.A. hut at Boisleaux. I thought then that it was a bleak sort of
place (I was to discover in subsequent months, it was almost as cushy a billet as
there was to be found in France but we were glad of any place with a bed after the
tiresome journey from Etaples. The hut was lighted with candles and the Y.M.C.A.
man in charge allotted each of us a rude kind of cot in a long row down the side of the
building. Tables occupied the centre, and at one of these we sat down together to eat
our simple and meagre supper. After supper it was still comparatively early and we had
nothing much better to do than think sentimentally and sadly of the loved ones at home,
or contemplate with forebodings that which awaited us on the morrow and in the days
to come with the stunting division Such reflections we knew were unhealthy
and sometimes disastrous, so we proceeded to explore the hut. On a shallow sort of
platform at one end of it we found a table on which was an old, time-worn, often-used
(and sometimes abused) gramophone. It was of the ancient type, having a trumpet to
increase the volume of sound, but the trumpet was missing Such is the vividness of
the memory that I recollect the table and the gramophone were to the left of the platform
as we faced it. As far as I can recall, there was only one record, there may have been
others, but at any rate only one made a sufficient impression upon my mind to have
remained through the years, it was Hello, My Dearie I shall never hear that song
to my dying day without thinking of that old gramophone in that bleak, candle-lit hut
We played that record not merely once or twice, but over and over again. During its
oft-repeated performance I stepped out of the hut into the blackness of the night to
get a breath of air and gaze heavenwards at the same bright-shining stars as were
shedding their light on the old folks at home.
The flash and boom of the guns were not the only things that made an
indelible impression upon my mind. Ever and anon there ascended the streak of a verey
light which burst in a white, shimmering glow seeming for a moment to illumine the
distant scene and enable me to envisage the line of men who occupied the front line
trenches and was the only barrier between me and the enemy. Once there sped heaven
wards a red light, followed by a green and then by another green it was the S.O.S.
sent up by men who must have imagined the enemy to be coming over the top in force,
it was only a matter of seconds before the occasional flash and boom became a quick-
flashing roar of a barrage, so heavy that my friends (they had not yet become pals
joined me in the darkness and all of us stood awe-inspired; we had visions ot that line of men
being driven back and of ourselves coming face to face with the grey-clad figures of the foe
However, it proved to be a false alarm, a common occurrence among men whose
nerves were at breaking-point and who supposed they had seen ominous movements
in no-man's-land and wanted the immediate comfort of a wall of fire between them and
those supposed movements. How familiar I became with it all in subsequent days
At the moment, however, it was a moving experience. Soon the quick-flashing roar
slackened to the occasional flash and boom interspersed by the rattle of a machine-gun.
We returned to the companion-like warmth of the candle-lit hut and the more
cheerful and more familiar strains of Hello, My Dearie Is it any* wonder that I
wished I had a copy of the old song
The conclusion of my story is a large envelope addressed to me in Augusta, Georgia,
in my mother's bold handwriting, bearing a London post-mark in December, 1934. It
contained a folded copy of "Hello, My Dearie!" for which she had persistently
ransacked the music shops of the Metropolis of the Empire.
P.SIf either Smith, who afterwards became attached to the Toe-Emmas," or Bruce, who remained
with me in the battalion until he was wounded, should still be alive and happen to read these words
I wish he would communicate with an old pal in a foreign land.
