No one seemed to realise that they were in Ypres—the Ypres which had so often been shattered by shell that the poor old town could hardly be surprised by any sort of new shell-caprice. No one saw the rent walls and gaping holes in every other building. I wondered if they could hear the guns! I could do so. They were hard at it every moment, all the time, from two to three miles distant. It was the old story of familiarity breeding contempt; or perhaps they were true philosophers, these Ypres folk.
General de Lisle ran to Potijze, to the headquarters of General Lefebvre, who commanded the French 18th Division. It seemed ages since I had been in Potijze. Our headquarters were not far beyond it in November, 1914, during the great first battle of Ypres.
On the way from Ypres along the Zonnebeke road we passed bunches of odd little French horse transport wagons. The road was very bad. We progressed in crawfish fashion, most of the way. The pavé was torn terribly by shell-fire, and there was sufficient mud and slime on it to make it extremely slippery. French soldiers were billeted in the dwellings along the road. At the edge of Potijze a dozen young boys and girls stood outside a house.
Returning to General Gough's headquarters we "took them over," as that night we were to relieve the 2nd Cavalry Division troopers in the trench line.
General de Lisle and Colonel Home ran up the Menin Road a kilometre or so, and, leaving the car, walked across the fields past the ruins that will always bear the name of "Cavan's House."
The General told me to put the car in the shelter of a house on the south side of the road, as shell-fire and the Menin Road were never strangers for long. I settled down to wait until the General had concluded his rounds of the prospective positions.
The Ypres-Menin Road will be remembered oh! so long, and oh! so well. It saw rough times.
Field guns near by started to work, and now and then German shells dropped in a field beyond.
The house behind which I was sheltered, in case of a stray shell, was a one-storey affair of modest mien.
Those of its windows which were not shattered were shuttered. Half of the roof had been shorn of its tiles. A shell had wrecked the interior of one end of the building. A glance out of a rear door-way showed a whole collection of shell-holes in the yard a few feet distant.