'Then we made a "night-flitting," the orderlies and myself, and slept a few miles to the S.W. But with every step away from the hut I became more and more uncomfortable. By daybreak I had decided to return and see how things were going. The orderlies decided to accompany me.
'On the way back we had to take cover once for a while, but finally reached the hut and carried on for the remainder of the day.
'We were called several kinds of lunatics for returning by the Medical Staff, who were then preparing to leave, and be it confessed we felt the truth of their remarks. It was quite out of the question to hold on any longer without cover save a "tin-hat" a-piece, so again we evacuated, this time finally.'
It was only when the grey-clad Germans were actually in sight that the workers at St. Leger left their loved Y.M.C.A. I only visited St. Leger once, but that little shanty strangely fascinated me. It was not much to look at, just a group of ruined farm buildings, and in it 'the swallows had found a house' and regardless of our presence, yes, regardless of the shells, for St. Leger was bombarded every day even then, they flew backwards and forwards, feeding their young and twittering merrily and unconcernedly as if it had been a farm building in one of our English counties. It must have been with a heavy heart that those Y.M.C.A. men turned their backs on St. Leger and trudged to Boisleaux-au-Mont, where the five splendid huts that formed our equipment shortly afterwards shared the fate of St. Leger, and were all destroyed before the advance of the Huns.
At Boyelles the tent was amid the ruins by the roadside, and the enamelled Triangle sign was attached to the bottom of the trunk of a tree that had been cut down by the enemy and was lying in the hedge just as it fell. Achiet-le-Petit Y.M.C.A. was in an orchard, the equipment consisting of a big marquee and several little shanties ingeniously constructed by the workers from empty petrol cans and biscuit boxes. High up in an elm tree was a sort of crow's nest, used by the Germans as an observation post during the time of their occupation. At Haplincourt the Y.M.C.A. was anything but imposing—an insignificant house fitted up as a club room, but in the paddock behind it the secretaries had erected a platform, and arranged an open-air auditorium on a grand scale. A hundred yards or so away was a large plunge bath, deep enough for a good high dive. It had been constructed by the Germans when they were in occupation, but when we saw it a score of our own Tommies were disporting themselves in the water and having a high old time. Albert was a scene of desolation, with its ruined church as the most conspicuous feature. High up on the top of the spire, dislodged by German shells, and jutting out at right angles to the spire, was the famous figure of the Virgin holding in her hands the infant Christ. For many months the figure had remained in this position, and was only finally brought down during the enemy's advance in 1918. The Y.M.C.A. in Albert was established in one big hut and two badly ruined houses. It was on the Saturday that St. Leger fell, and the Sunday at Albert was a memorable day. The town was crowded with an endless stream of men, horses, guns, and service wagons passing through. Little was sold in our canteens, but free refreshments were handed out by tired but willing workers all day long. Nearly all those workers had thrilling stories to tell of narrow escapes from death. Albert was evacuated on the Sunday night, and the place must have presented somewhat the appearance of a shambles. The Boche aeroplanes were dropping bombs or firing their machine-guns all the time, but still our men kept on serving the hot tea and cocoa, biscuits, and cigarettes that were so much appreciated by officers and men alike, only leaving their posts and abandoning their hut when ordered to do so by the Military. The retreat from Albert must have been like an awful nightmare. Some of our men in the darkness became entangled in the fallen wires, and whilst trying to extricate themselves heard the hum of an aeroplane just overhead, and a bomb was dropped only a few yards in front of them.
THE Y.M.C.A. IN A RUINED WAREHOUSE. SHELL-HOLE IN FLOOR OF CANTEEN
At Bapaume we had several centres in and closely adjacent to the town. Bapaume, like Peronne, was not destroyed by enemy shell-fire, but deliberately wrecked by the Hun before he was forced to evacuate, and the foe we face to-day is a past master in the art of destruction. Hardly a building of any description remained intact in either of these towns when the British entered into occupation. That very fact made us marvel when, standing for the first time in front of the big building occupied by the Y.M.C.A. in Peronne we noticed that it was practically intact. On entering the building we marvelled still more, for the first object we saw was a fine German piano. Surely it was an act of kindness on the part of the wily Hun to leave it for our men. Was it? When the British occupied Peronne a company of troops from the west of England were the first to enter that house. A Tommy who was musical made a bee-line for the piano, but his officer restrained him, bidding him first look inside. It was well he did so, for three powerful bombs were attached to the strings of the piano, and had he touched one of the keys concerned, he himself, the piano, and the building would have been utterly destroyed. In the hut attached to the house a boxing match was taking place on the evening of our arrival, and men had come from outposts miles away to take part. Underneath the house was a German dug-out of almost incredible depth. The original staircase was missing—the Germans having commandeered the wood for the construction of the dug-out—but it had been replaced by an ingenious Y.M.C.A. secretary, who had searched amid the ruins of Peronne until at last he had found another staircase, which, with infinite pains and labour and not a little ingenuity, he had built in to replace the original one. The day before our visit the old lady who had lived in the house before the war paid a visit to her old home. She was a refugee, and had trudged miles to get back to Peronne. She requested permission to dig in the garden and soon unearthed the uniform of her husband who fought against the Germans in 1870. She had buried it there before the fall of the town. Digging again she came across his sword and accoutrements, and deeper still, her silver spoons and other trinkets that she valued. Could anything bring home more clearly the horrors of war? If, instead of Peronne in Northern France, it had been that sweet little town in England or Scotland, or that village in Wales or Ireland in which you live! If you had heard the cry one evening, 'The Huns are coming,' and had just half an hour in which to rush round your home and gather together any things you specially treasured, and take them out into your garden and bury them, knowing that anything you left behind would be either looted and sent to Germany, or deliberately destroyed for sheer hate! How easily this might have been, but for the mercy of God, the mistakes and miscalculations of the enemy, and the bravery and self-sacrifice of our heroes in blue and khaki, yes, and our workers in fustian and print—for England must never forget the debt she owes to her munition workers as well as to her sailors, soldiers, and airmen. They see nothing of the romance of war; they know nothing of its excitement, and yet apart from their patriotic service the best efforts of our fighting men would have been in vain.
