Our gallant marchers, with the confetti as it were still sticking to them, have seen a great deal of Belgium, have been greatly excited, have reached Ypres with numbers intact, have taken their stand four feet deep in the clay of the fields of Zandwoorde and have taken a look round. They have been shelled. The shells have been falling irrelevantly—far from them. The first man to perish is a colour-sergeant, who, taking a stroll, gets shot by accident by an over-hasty sentry. The colour-sergeant did not quite realise the war till then. Others also did not realise the silent symbol of the fact that in fighting others you start by killing yourselves. Next to die is a drummer-boy, killed by a shell on the way to a hamlet called America, a kilometre beyond Kruisseecke. With what pathos was that dead boy considered! For he was a child of the Army. Drummer-boys are nearly always orphans, or boys without homes, brought up in barracks, taught in the Army school, with the Army for father and mother, the Army for God, the Army for nurse. Little drummer-boy dead on the way to America—the first to go West! It is a matter for pause, for a sad thought. If, however, the dead meet one another in the other world, as so many now believe, the boy will soon be comforted, for within the week scores of friends, hundreds of acquaintances, will join him. See a reconnaissance at Polygon Wood and Eskernest! Out of a whole company, only twenty-five come back. Its commander killed. Another company half destroyed—its commander killed also. Two captains buried side by side near a much-shelled house—rudimentary wooden crosses put o'er their resting-place. They were eager impetuous captains who had chafed to wait in England all August and September. Their minds were full of what the war really meant. But so soon are they sped! For four years the agony of Ypres beginning in these days will roll impotently on whilst they lie there, and the war with its gossip, its articles and speeches, its new inventions and new bitternesses will go on. God loved them and removed them betimes from the scene.
Yet if they see, if they can hear and know from other realms, what a spectacle, what an intense interest is theirs. To see the remains of their own poor companies of soldiers march back to Zandwoorde—the "not the six hundred," to see the ever-encroaching German and the more and more intimate and terrible strife proceed. The grand emotions of pity and fear thrill the air as the tumultuous battle goes on....
The shell-fire ceases to be irrelevant and finds its mark, turns whole brigades out of their trenches; reinforcements move with the acceleration of a moving ant-heap which has been kicked over. False news comes and confounds true news. The Borders are said to have given way. Guards and Gordons go to their support. Weak points change to strong points, strong to weak. Columns of assault are launched by the enemy, first on one point, then on another. A column breaks through at Kruisseecke at nightfall. The madness of the murder-excitement enters the trenches, and it is bayonet to bayonet; the rain streams down to mingle with blood, it is intensely dark, many have lost their clearness of mind and balance of nerve. But there is a counter-attack. Gallant Major F——, leading, is shot down; there is a dreadful mêlée and then silence. The enemy is winning his way. Nevertheless patrols in Kruisseecke round up a large number and take them prisoner. There is a dispute as to who is to have the merit of having taken the prisoners. But what does that matter? Round about this village is confusion worse confounded. Germans appear dressed up as Gordon Highlanders, then Gordons are thought to be Germans in disguise. Strange masses roll up through the rain looking not at all like Germans and crying "We are French."—"We are Allies"—"Don't shoot"—"Where is Captain P——?" "We surrender," and things of that kind. The survivors of a Staffordshire regiment devoid of officers, officers all down and out, come pelting through the lines having thrown their rifles away. German yells of victory break out.... It is a terrible night, one night, one little corner of the ground outside the city. Dawn comes, and Kruisseecke is with the enemy. It remains with the enemy. And there for many the march from Zeebruges ends and a personal war history is concluded. The torch of war has been carried thus far, to the battle of Ypres. The spent runner gives it to another who carries it in turn—
Back then to Ypres! It is an exposed moorland way. No woods, no houses stop the even progress of the wind. The trees are stumps no higher than Venetian masts. Instead of crops in the fields—crosses, an enormous harvest. Along the Menin road a steam tram rolls. At the entrance to Ypres is the communal cemetery of the city. Here, around the pre-war Belgian dead, lie Hussars, Lancers, Dragoon Guards, Scots Guards, all officers, all of the 1914 fighting. There they were lowered into graves with the flag about them—there they remain. In this acre of death the high wooden crucifix still stands, with its riven agonised Lord looking down. Of the hundreds of thousands of shells which fell in Ypres all spared Him—all but one which came direct and actually hit the Cross. That one did not explode but instead, half-buried itself in the wood and remains stuck in the upright to this day—an accidental symbol of the power of the Cross.
Ypres is terribly empty. Hundreds of thousands of eyes would look on it but there are few people who come to look at it—just ones and twos who stand diminutively in front of the great ruins and peer at them like the conventional figures in an old print. This absence of the living intensifies the strange atmosphere. It is said that the city will build itself up again, but it is possible to feel some doubt on that point. Perhaps Ypres will never be built again. At present it has some hundred and fifty places where they sell beer to two where they sell anything else. Its string of wooden hotels with cubicle bedrooms do not pay. The curious come for an hour or so from Ostende but do not spend the night. There is a sense of emptiness and tragedy which cannot be dispelled. Some sort of unit of British troops does duty instead of police and is posted to various guards, the sentries being however without rifles. The soldiers in their "sixth year" impart a certain liveliness. A party of them at night coming down the middle of the street singing
One word of thine,
Tell the world you are mine,
And the world will be dearer to me,
in a full-throated chorus wakens echoes from dark corners of the ruins. There is music and dancing in favoured taverns. The returned Belgians do not perhaps belong naturally to the atmosphere of the sublime. They love beer and sociality. They will make their money by some means—they are not too particular how. Civilised ethics do not rule in these places where war has worked its will.
Strolling along at dusk past the Cloth Hall tower a bright-eyed Belgian wolf asks you who you are. "C'est triste, n'est ce pas?" says he, pointing to the ruins. Triste is what they are not. The Belgian is from Poperinghe. It is very dull there now. Tous les soldats sont partis. Also the mamzelles. Pas de jig-a-jig.