The bright morning sun and blue, cloudless sky above, the grey and white ruins on every hand, and the blood-red, leaping, straining, struggling patch of angry flame that roared in our faces as we drew near to it, made a picture that would have delighted the heart of an artist.
I stopped the car.
The General at first counselled rushing through the fire, but I dreaded the result. Even should we have dashed past unscathed, the thought of the petrol in the car made me hesitate.
Then, beyond the conflagration, we saw that a house at the western approach to the Menin bridge had been knocked over by a shell, and so fallen that it completely blocked the road. Half a hundred men must work for hours before the Menin bridge would once more be open for traffic, though fortunately the bridge itself was undamaged.
Reversing the car and regaining the Grande Place, I threaded my way past deep holes in the pavé, and cautiously clambered over piles of débris as we sought another route eastward. Along a street where desolation reigned supreme we went, until we reached the eastern moat wall. Turning north, we sought an outlet on the St. Jean road.
Pushing over great fallen timbers, nail-studded and threatening a puncture at every revolution of the wheels, over, by and into holes in the paved road, it seemed impossible the car could surmount and pass the mounds of wreckage and paving-blocks that filled the way.
Over the railway we crawled, and to the very northern edge of Ypres. Just as we were congratulating ourselves on having won through, in spite of apparently insurmountable difficulties, a monster shell-cavity, thirty feet in diameter, and so deep as to be absolutely impassable for the car, opened in front of us.
The road was wide, but the shell had fallen in its centre, heaping the earth and stone at the edges of the gaping crater until it blocked the street from side to side.
General de Lisle and his two companions dismounted and proceeded on foot, instructing me to "be careful and get home safely."