With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

Ypres, with its snug houses and intimate streets, must have made a comforting impression on our troops, the war-worn veterans of Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne, as they tramped in from beneath the sighing poplars of the Poperinghe road. The city yet sheltered people when our troops came through; moreover, the 87th French Territorial Division was billeted in the town. How many of the Englishmen, whose eyes were gladdened by the sight of the old-world houses and smiling prosperity of the ancient city, were destined never to return through the Menin Gate, beyond which in the wooded plain the greatest battle of the war was raging! In the churches and convents of the city, particularly in the Chapel of the Irish Ladies of Ypres, where was hanging the British standard captured by Clare’s Dragoons fighting with the French at Ramillies, many a prayer went up in those days for the army fighting so steadfastly without the city against overwhelming odds.

The roads from Ypres radiate like spokes of a wheel. To pass from westward to eastward of Ypres you must go through the city. During the fight all the immense activity of the rear of an army, redoubled in intensity when a battle is in progress, went on in and about Ypres, whose century-old houses, with their red roofs and overhanging gables, will be ever associated with the battle in the minds of those who fought there. For three weeks, while our thin line resisted the mighty smashes of the flower of the German army, the guns drummed almost unceasingly in the distance, and the little motor ambulances came whirring over the uneven cobble-stones of the city, bearing in the wounded to the field dressing-station, an unending procession of pain.

Ypres could not remain unscathed in the battle. Soon the German batteries took the proud towers of the Cloth Hall and St. Martin’s for their goal, and amid a rain of shells pouring into the city, the luckless inhabitants, once again after centuries, were compelled to fly for safety out along the bare and dusty road that leads to Poperinghe.

The Poperinghe road! Who of our army in the field that has ever passed along it will ever forget that hideous highway—the road of pain for many, the road of death for many, the road of glory for all? I have traversed it in all weathers and in all conditions, and never have I seen it without a feeling almost of dread, the sensation of treading on ground sanctified by the feet of heroes going to their death.

Straight and ugly and flat, lined with tall poplars with bushy tops, set in the centre with uneven pavé worn bright by the wheels of a thousand motor-cars and lorries and carts, the Poperinghe road has been the silent witness of all the vicissitudes of the stupendous struggles which have raged about Ypres. On its polished pavé the emotions of a million men have been ground fine by the relentless wheels of the chariot of war. Men have passed along that road into battle, their hearts singing with the thrill of great deeds standing before, and along it have returned from the front pale, silent forms, the Angel of Death their escort—or have returned no more.

I have met them going into action along that road, in the blazing heat of noonday, tramping steadily in the thick dust of the footpath lining the pavé, tunics unbuttoned, sweat streaming down their begrimed faces. I have seen them returning, lying very still in the motor ambulances, with the stolid philosophy of wounded men, or else stifling in the ghastly grip of the asphyxiating gas.

Not even 17-inch shells blindly dropped at arbitrary intervals will permanently separate the Fleming from his home. Therefore, as soon as the German bombardment of Ypres slackened, the refugees came streaming back to find a great slice cut out of the tower of the Cloth Hall, the tower and roof of St. Martin’s irreparably damaged, and many houses in different quarters of the town considerably battered.

When I paid my first visit to Ypres in March—it was, I remember, during the battle of Neuve Chapelle which was raging far to the south—the city was full of life. British, French, and Belgian troops were billeted there. There was a fine medley of khaki, bleu horizon, as the new powder-blue of the French Army is called, and the variegated hues of the uniforms of the braves Belges. The soldiers had fraternized with one another and with the populace. All the small boys were wearing puttees, all the small girls, and some of the grown-up ones, British Army badges, whilst there appeared to reign a fine spirit of Socialism with regard to the rations of the three armies. Everybody, soldiers and civilians alike, seemed to be subsisting on bully-beef, singe (as the French soldier calls his tinned meat), the famous plum-and-apple jam of the British Expeditionary Force, and ration biscuits. English cigarettes and newspapers were for sale in the shops, and here and there on shutters or on doors were inscribed in more or less idiomatic English notices to the effect that washing was done, or that eggs and milk were for sale.

Whether it was the premonition that I should never see Ypres again as a populated city, I know not, but the fact remains that every detail of that brief visit to the city in March remains engraved on my memory. The streets were swarming with soldiers and children. Huge lorries of our Mechanical Transport grunted through the streets; mounted police clop-clopped over the cobbles; the women, lineal descendants of the lace-workers of the Middle Ages, sat at their half-doors, and plied the funny little wooden cocoons by means of which the renowned Ypres lace is made. Only the Grand’ Place, with the torn tower and gaping roof of the Cloth Hall, and the battered belfry of St. Martin’s, the damaged Lunatic Asylum where a Red Cross hospital was installed, and here and there a roofless house or a shell-hole torn in a façade, remained to tell of the stern struggle which had raged about the city.

I roamed through the empty and battered rooms of the Cloth Hall, and picked up from the floor great flakes of the ugly frescoes which had decorated the walls. I had a perfectly prosaic tea in a little teashop on the Grand’ Place before motoring away through the crowded streets into the gathering darkness. Thus I left Ypres, peaceful and busy, and, to tell the truth, I think, rather basking in the sunshine of publicity brought to the old place after so many centuries by the historic events of which it was the centre. Two months were to elapse before I saw Ypres again. Then Ypres was dead.