A Y.M.C.A. CELLAR AT YPRES
Never was the Y.M.C.A. more appreciated than during the months that preceded the great retreat in the spring of 1918. New Red Triangle huts were springing up like mushrooms, especially in the Fifth Army area, that part of the line that had recently been taken over from the French. Supported by the generous gifts of friends at home, ably directed by our divisional secretaries and those associated with them in the work, and supported and encouraged in every way by the Military Authorities, the progress made was remarkable. Then came the unexpected advance of the German hordes and the laborious work of months was destroyed in a few hours. At Noyon the secretary had to quit in a hurry, but returned to the hut later to bring away the money belonging to the Y.M.C.A. Thrice he returned, and the third time found it impossible to get away. After remaining in hiding for twenty-four hours he at length managed to escape with ten thousand francs in his pocket, saved for the Association which lost so heavily during those terrible days. At Amiens the Y.M.C.A. workers hung on for ten days after the official canteens had been removed because the town had become too hot for them. Day and night the 'Joy' hut close to the railway station was kept open, and thronged with officers and men, and the service rendered to the troops may be gauged from the amount of the takings, which ranged between fifteen and twenty-thousand francs a day.
Our total loss in the retreat was exceedingly heavy—more than one hundred and thirty huts and other centres in Picardy and Flanders, and in cash, upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Serious as was that loss it might have been very much worse. Eight trucks of stores and equipment were stopped in the nick of time. The axle of one of our big lorries broke within a hundred yards of the most heavily shelled area in one of the towns bombarded by the enemy, but it was got away and, excepting in two cases, all the money and notes from tills and cash-boxes were removed safely before the huts were abandoned—striking testimony to the devotion of those in charge. 'What I think impressed me most,' wrote the organising secretary for France, 'has been the undaunted spirit of our workers, who, when shelled out of huts, persisted in the attempt to return to them under very great personal danger.' 'Although we have lost everything that we had,' wrote one, 'we still have hope within us, and are trusting to get back right into the thick of things in the very near future.' Yet another, writing in the spirit of Eastertide, said, 'We believe that our work will rise in new freshness and power out of its apparent extinction!' 'There was a singular unanimity of effort on the part of the workers who were isolated one from the other, and had no opportunity of arranging a common policy. The sale of such articles as the soldiers needed continued in the huts up to the last moment possible, and then, when the danger of the hut and stores falling into the hands of the enemy became imminent, biscuits and cigarettes were handed out as largely as possible to men in the neighbourhood taking part in the fighting. One would have thought that having done this the workers would have considered their own personal safety and retired, but in several cases I found them running stunts for walking wounded in the open, outside the hut or in its immediate neighbourhood, in close touch with the medical authorities.
'The confusion of the retreat opened up to our workers opportunities of service which they gladly utilised. Last night was a night of uncertainty. We could not go to bed owing to the uncertainty of the military position where our headquarters were, and so stood on a high hill beside an old Trappist monastery, watching the village at the foot in flames, and trying to ascertain the progress of the fighting through the darkness. Our workers even under these circumstances seized an opportunity of doing a very fine bit of service. A stream of poor refugees were passing, people of all conditions and ages, fleeing for safety and shelter, and so at 11.30 at night at the cross-roads, a table was set up with a hot urn of cocoa and supplies of biscuits, which were handed out to French and Flemish people as they passed....
'I have never seen anything that has touched me more than these streams of all sorts and conditions of people straggling along with their little belongings, infants in arms, to old people who had not walked a mile for years. It was a great opportunity for rendering a truly Christian service. The other day we lent one of our large lorries for a whole day for the purpose of carrying these people in some degree of comfort to a place of safety.'
Thus by every device that resourcefulness and experience could suggest the workers of the Y.M.C.A. in France ministered to the comfort of the men who were so bravely sustaining that terrible onslaught. The organisation of the Red Triangle is the embodied goodwill of the British people towards its beloved army. An emergency like the one in the spring of 1918 was just the time when the services of the Red Triangle were most sorely needed by our soldiers.
Fortunately, all the Y.M.C.A. workers got away safely. Sixty from the Fifth Army took refuge at Amiens, whilst more than eighty from the area of the Third Army found sanctuary at Doullens.
A few months later, thanks to the arrival of the Americans in France, and the brilliant strategy of Foch and Haig; thanks above all to the mercy of God, the tide turned, and the Huns were once more in full retreat. A distinguished war correspondent wrote his impressions of Bapaume a day or two after it had again been captured by the British. Said he, 'I prowled about the streets of Bapaume through gaping walls of houses, over piled wreckage, and found it the same old Bapaume as when I had left it, except that some of our huts and an officers' club, and some Y.M.C.A. tents and shelters have been blown to bits like everything else.' A ruined town without a Y.M.C.A.! Could anything be more desolate?