Did you see that splendid joke in Punch—an old man talking to a very badly wounded Irish soldier swathed in bandages from head to foot? The former says, "This is a terrible war, isn't it, my man?" Pat replies, "Yes, sorr, it is that; a rale tirrible war. But faith! 'tis better than no war at all." Capital, and so deliciously Irish!
August 23rd, 1915.
Excessively busy days these—out sometimes from nine in the morning till about ten at night, often missing meals perforce. A few days back I was in the city whose name practically sums up the character of British fighting—Ypres. Never have I seen such a picture of desolation. Not a house standing; only skeletons of buildings, shattered walls, and gaping window openings, from which all vestige of glass has long since disappeared. The Church and the Cloth Hall are simply piles of débris. To walk along the streets is like a kind of nightmare, even when the Boches are not indulging in a spell of hate against the place. Talk of Pompeii—why, this puts it quite among the "also-rans." What a pathetic spectacle to see a whole city in ruins! Stupefaction and sadness at the wholesale destruction is my impression of this melancholy ruin of an historic town.
Having seen my rations delivered to our regiments, I and my companions (two Hussar officers) visited a battery of 5-inch howitzers at work not far off, through the medium of a friendly Artillery officer. Their headquarters have been amazingly lucky in not being hit up to date. They told us that there was going to be great "strafing" that night, that the Boches were very good gunners, but that they and the French sometimes became quarrelsome and loosed off at each other like fury for a short time, both sides doing very little real damage. As we were chatting a long whistle-blast betokened the presence of a Taube, and our companions quickly dragged us out of sight into a dug-out, lest the enemy airman should spot men about and send back the range. You must understand that the guns are so concealed that it is almost impossible to see them even when you know where they are located. After the aerial visitor cleared off, we had a great tea, with all the ground about us shaking to the reverberation of the battery discharges. Presently a long-drawn-out screech in the distance, and a fearful crash in the middle distance. "That's Percy again!" said the Artillery officer. We found that "Percy" is the name for a German 17-incher, which frequently drops shells ten miles behind our lines. The smallest crater made by his shells would accommodate a locomotive engine with ease. "Percy" is no doubt "some gun," as the Yankees would say. It was a curious sensation to walk about the fields with shells from both sides flying over one's head. Some gas shells had been discharged that day, and the air in places was quite heavy with the odour of them—not unpleasant to smell, but most mephitic, and apt to make your eyes water.
Whom do you think I met on the main road up to-day? None other than Reggie Lloyd, who was one of my best pals at Dulwich. Our car was moving very fast and overtook his. I stopped and jumped out, and we exchanged a firm handshake and a few words before we had to be moving on again "in the cause of duty." He is a second lieutenant in the R.E., and looked thundering fit. To-day I saw him again. On this occasion he was moving about fifty miles an hour on a motor-bike, and we only had time for a hand-wave as we passed. What a thrill to meet an old pal like that out here in the fire zone!
August 28th, 1915.
To go up the road from here to the firing-line is a great experience. You see, as you pass along, all the multifarious items of army organisation—long lines of lorries, horsed-wagons, limbers, guns, columns of marching men, motor-cars by the score, French soldiers, British soldiers, aeroplanes spinning merrily overhead—truly a wonderful spectacle. You have no conception of the abominable state of the main roads out here. The pavé road, peculiar to these parts, is always a bone-shaker at the best of times, but now, after the passage of so much heavy traffic, it is simply appalling. A curious feature is the extraordinary straightness of the main roads, down which you can literally see for miles. The by-roads, on the other hand, seem to abound in right-angled turns, and it is not an easy matter to drive a car along at any considerable rate of speed.
My knowledge of French has come in very useful indeed, but for these outlying country districts a knowledge of Flemish would be even more valuable. Many persons about here speak not one word of French, and Flemish is almost always used by the people en famille. It is a kind of mixture of low German and middle English. I can usually get at people's meanings, and even make them understand mine, by a jargon embracing sometimes words from Chaucer and sometimes a little German. Listening to the language when spoken one is reminded of rather nasal Welsh. There is a distinct resemblance between the general sound of Welsh and Flemish in conversation.
These parts constitute one of the most Catholic districts in Europe; the people are quite as devout as those of the south of Ireland. Wherever you go on the roads you are confronted with shrines—little structures with an altar, holy images, etc., that can be seen through a glass window barred across with slender pieces of iron. Above the door is an admonition urging the passer-by to stop and say an "Ave" or a "Pater." All the dedications to saints and the Virgin are in Latin. For example, this is a very common heading for a shrine, "Ave, Maria, gratiæ plena." I have also seen shrines dedicated to some of those old chaps that Dad is so interested in—Antony of Padua, Francis of Assisi, etc. All over the place you meet, stuck in boxes with glass fronts and mounted on poles, tiny waxen images of various saints, or Christ on the Cross, the Virgin Mary, etc., etc. When a native comes to one of these shrines or images, he pulls off his hat, crosses himself, repeats a prayer, and passes on, probably confident that his sins are forgiven. Everybody goes to Mass at the church of his commune at seven o'clock each morning, and often in the evening as well—on Sunday about three times. Church spires are about the only landmarks in this very flat and rather uninteresting country. The towers vary between the square and the spire. The church itself is always large and quite imposing. You don't see churches of anything like the same size in English villages of corresponding population. A common sight as you ride along these roads is to see the curé, dressed in a long black surtout and a huge wide-brimmed hat just like "Don Bartola," the music-master in the opera of Il Barbiere de Siviglia. The curé gravely salutes you as you pass by, "Bon jour, mon ami!"
I am billeted with very decent folk, extremely devout Catholics. The old man is the secretary to the Mayor. He spends his spare time learning English, and can read an English newspaper quite well. My room is of the kind I like—plain, with two huge windows opening like folding-doors, and only a tiny carpet to attract the dust; the rest clean, bare boards. In the room are two waxen images, one of the Virgin and Child, and one of Christ carrying a child in His arms; also a waxen model in a case of glass of the Virgin and Child, besides no fewer than three crucifixes. This is only characteristic of the whole village: every room I've seen hereabouts seems crowded with images. There are lots of these images, chipped and smashed, lying about the streets of Ypres. I suppose where you are at present [Scotland] everybody is a Presbyterian and very much against all ritual. There is at least this resemblance between Scot and Flemish: they both call the church "kirk" or "kerque." It is rather amusing to think that, according to the ideas of some English Churchmen, both Scottish Presbyterian and Flemish Catholic are lost for ever; while the Baptist of Llanelly is equally convinced that all three of them are; and each imagines the other to be hopelessly wrong. The war has this advantage: that it cuts athwart of all such ridiculous distinctions—for have we not among the Allies English Churchmen and Nonconformists, Catholics, Mohammedans, Hindus and secular Frenchmen, all fighting on the one side against another side which includes Catholics, Protestants and Mohammedans? I say what matter what a man believes if he does his duty?