During these days we did Company training, in preparation for our debut in the SALIENT.
THE SALIENT! How can one hope to describe it so as to bring home its realities to those who have never seen it? Yet without some such description the history of the next few months would be about as informative as the stereotyped official bulletin, “On the rest of the Front there was nothing to report.”
Picture then POPERINGHE, a typical Belgian town, with here and there a house partly demolished by shell fire, crawling with troops of all kinds, with shops, restaurants, and estaminets, sprinkled with English notices, such as “Divisional Headquarters,” “Wind Dangerous,” “Officers’ Club,” “Divisional Canteen,” and so on. This was our centre of civilisation. Beyond it stretched eastwards the YPRES road, fringed at first with tall trees and a sprinkling of houses, and peopled with troops, lurries, guns, limbers—coming and going, twelve kilometres of it, with deep ditches on either side, and beyond them fields which had once been cultivated but were now given over to “dumps,” camps, battery positions, and so on, a few fields being still under cultivation by women and old men.
After six kilometres we come to VLAMERTINGHE, badly knocked about, but with a certain number of houses still standing and used by our troops; a thin slice of the tower of the church remaining to give the Hun a range mark; from this point the road is under enemy observation, and one begins to notice shell holes and broken trees becoming more frequent as we near YPRES railway station, to which trains still run, but only at night with all lights out, drawn very slowly and silently by a mysterious engine which shuts off steam and proceeds by electricity or something of the kind as it nears YPRES.
Map No. 2
THE YPRES SALIENT
Standing on the “platform” at YPRES station at night, you see the enemy flares going up all round you except on the west, and you realise that you are indeed in “The Salient.”
The city of YPRES itself, which at first sight seems like a jumble of ruins, you find presently to contain hiding-places for dozens of guns and hundreds of troops; whole streets of houses remain standing, mostly minus windows or doors. By day, the streets are almost deserted; by night, though no lights are shown, the city is alive with parties of troops, mule-drawn limbers, waggons, and motor lurries, bringing up rations and ammunition and the baggage of incoming Battalions.