CHAPTER X
CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON THE WESTERN FRONT
My son, who is somewhere in France, tells me what a great comfort your Y.M.C.A. has been to him from the time he started his training at —— and all through his stopping-places almost up to the trenches.
Unless one has seen for oneself the ravages of war, it is impossible to conceive the horror and desolation of a place like Ypres. Before the war it was one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, to-day it is nothing more than a heap of ruins. It is enough to make even the most unemotional of men cry, to stand in that once beautiful Cloth Hall Square and see how complete is the destruction—not one house, not a single room left intact—everything destroyed beyond recognition. And what of the Y.M.C.A. in Ypres? There we found the Red Triangle standing erect amid the ruins, and following the hand that pointed down we came to a little cellar Y.M.C.A.—only a cellar and yet it had been a source of helpfulness and inspiration to tens of thousands of our brave men. It was wonderfully fitted up, contained a small circulating library, piano, and everything needed for the canteen side of things. Not only that, it was a centre to work from. Between the cellar and the enemy were nine dug-outs at advanced stations. As these were all evacuated by order of the Military during the German offensive in April 1918, there can be no objection to their location being indicated. The first consisted of a ruined house and a Nissen hut at the Asylum; the second was at 'Salvation Corner,' and the third at Dead End, on the Canal bank. There was a Y.M.C.A. at Wells Cross Roads, another at St. Jean and Wiel, and a sixth at Potyze Château. The seventh had a homely ring about it, for it was situated at 'Oxford Circus,' the eighth was at St. Julien, the ninth at Lille Gate (Ypres), and the tenth was the cellar Y.M.C.A. at the corner of Lille Road referred to above. For many months it was the centre of the social life of the stricken town, but in August 1917 it received a direct hit from an enemy shell, and was knocked in. This dug-out work is intensely interesting, though naturally it has its limitations. Large meetings are, of course, impossible; sometimes even the singing of a hymn would be sufficient to attract the attention of Fritz, but the man who is resourceful and courageous, and who can see an opportunity for Christian service in meeting the common everyday needs of men, will find endless opportunities of putting in a word for the Master—and the sordid dug-out under shell-fire, can easily be transformed into a temple to His praise, an inquiry-room where resolutions are made that change the lives of men, and help the soldier to realise that he is called to be a crusader.
CANADIAN Y.M.C.A. DUG-OUT IN A MINE CRATER ON VIMY RIDGE, 1917
A CANADIAN Y.M.C.A. DUG-OUT NEAR VIMY RIDGE
In the Red Triangle dug-outs of the Ypres salient, from three to four thousand bloaters were supplied to the troops week by week; 1500 kilos of apples, and more than 100,000 eggs! It was a miracle how these latter were collected in the villages behind the line. Corps provided a lorry and two drivers for five months to bring them into Ypres, and also assisted us with thirty orderlies. It was that timely help that made our work possible. It would be difficult to overestimate the boon to the troops of this variety to their diet. Iron rations will keep body and soul together, but it is the little extra that helps so much in keeping up the health and spirits of the men. They would follow the egg lorry for a mile and gladly pay the threepence each that the eggs cost. In February 1918, the turnover from the Red Triangle centres round Ypres amounted to 245,000 francs, whilst in March it had risen to 260,000. For many weeks in this salient we gave away from five to six thousand gallons of hot drinks each week. All honour to the band of Y.M.C.A. leaders who kept the Red Triangle flag flying under these difficult conditions. For six weeks one of our leaders was unable to leave his cellar home, owing to the incessant shelling and bombing of the immediate vicinity. These were men who 'counted not their own lives dear unto them,' but were ready to take any risk and to put up with any personal inconvenience that they might serve the country they loved—yes, and they too endured 'as seeing Him Who is invisible.'
The King, who is the patron of the Y.M.C.A., and very keenly interested in the work, visited our tiny centre at Messines. The dug-out at Wytschaete was knocked out, and the Red Triangle cellar at Meroc, just behind Loos, destroyed by a direct hit. The latter was approached by a long communication trench, and was fitted up in the ordinary way—a few tables and chairs, reading and writing materials, games, pictures on the walls, and, of course, the inevitable and always appreciated piano. A few days before we were there a dud shell from one of the German 'heavies' fell only two or three yards in front of the divisional secretary's car. The cellar was immediately under a ruined brasserie, and in the grounds of the latter was a solitary German grave. The story goes that in the early days of the war enemy patrols passed through Meroc, and a shot alleged to have been fired from a window of the brasserie found its billet in one of the Huns. In revenge, the Germans killed every man, woman, and child in the brasserie. In striking contrast was the story told us by the matron of one of our British hospitals: 'Every one in this ward is desperately wounded, and too ill to travel. All in that row,' said she, pointing, 'are Germans. Yesterday a man occupying one of those beds lay dying, and could not make his head comfortable. I went into the next ward, and said to the Tommies "There's a German dying, will one of you lend him your pillow?" Without a moment's hesitation,' said she, 'every one of those dangerously wounded Britishers whipped out his pillow to help his dying enemy.' That is the spirit of our men, and that accounts, quite as much as their valour, for the fact that they have won the respect even of an enemy trained from infancy to regard the British soldier as an object of scorn and derision.