THE YPRES TIMES
7
Armistice Day, 1935
"Xest jforget
of the near future, because the human tribes are arming again and the drums are beating
in the jungles. But none of that will ever blot out of my mind the spirit of those battalions
of youth who fought in the last war, nor the courage and cheerfulness and patience
with which they faced every hardship. I remember the Cockney humourists who made
jokes even in No Man's Land, the Scottish battalions whose valour was beyond all
words, the Canadians, as hard as steel, the Australians, very wild and free in their
ways, and the divisions recruited from the English counties who were the back-bone
of our armies from first to last. I remember the thousands of young officers of the New
Army, as we called it. They had been brought up in good homes. They had been taught
to wash behind the ears. They had gone to good schools where they had been taught
the code of good manners and the tradition of young gentlemen. Now they had to sit
in verminous dug-outs, and to crawl into the mud of No Man's Land, and to lead their
men across shell holes and mine craters through infernal barrage fire. But they always
said Good morning very brightly when I met them in sinister places and they tried
to see the bright side of things even in an O.P. overlooking the enemy's sandbags. Be
tween battles when they were out of the line for a spell in the ancient city of Amiens,
or in Cassel on the hill behind the Salient they were wonderfully successful in forgetting
the horrors of war which lay three days behind them and a week or two ahead. Is it
possible or right to draw a veil of forgetfulness over all that splendid courage, that
heroic quality of youth, under the plea that the war should now be forgotten Should
we not rather cherish every record which brings back to us the memory of those boys
our noblest and best with their songs, their laughter, their sacrifice, and their idealism
Shakespeare has immortalised the men who fought at Agincourt. We do not forget
or wish to forget, the soldiers of the Peninsular war as Thomas Hardy has brought
back their ghosts in his Dynasts There is still to be written the Saga of the men of
Ypres and the Somme though so many war books have been published. The Ypres
League, for which I write this article, stands for the immortal memory of the men
who served from 1914 to 1918, and to keep their valour, suffering and sacrifice, undimmed
in the mind of the nation, as a great heritage of heroic tradition. That surges up again
in our hearts and souls each year on November 11th during the Two Minutes' Silence.
It will be a betrayal of our dead if ever we give up that reminder and those who love
peace best should be the strongest advocates of the annual remembrance because in
that silence when life stands still so still that the very birds are astonished there
is a spiritual emotion which is deeper and higher than any hatreds or hostilities. In these
moments we remember also the dead who were our enemies, and who now perhaps in
another No Man's Land are the comrades of our own dead youth.
err
You, falling nobly for the righteous nations
Reveal the unknown, the unhoped for face of God.
After long toil, your labours shall not perish.
Through grateful generations yet to come,
Your ardent gesture, dying/love shall cherish,
And like a beacon, you shall guide us home.
-if 1
CAMPBELL OF SADDELL, F.S.A. (Scot.), J.P.,
The Captain of Saddell Castle.