A little forest to the left bristles with machine guns backed by infantry in rifle pits and covered trenches. The approach to these positions has been made almost impossible by barbed-wire entanglements strewn with brush and branches of trees and having the appearance of a copse of heather.
British, French, and Belgian troops are greeted with cheers by the people as they march from spells of duty in the trenches to the villages in the rear. These men are jaded and worn. They stay in the trenches for days at a time and are constantly under artillery fire as well as being subjected to infantry attacks.
As one group goes back to rest, another moves forward to take its place, and the men going into action cheer those who are retiring.
[TRAITOR MAYOR SHOT.]
A British officer writes home from the front remarking on the curious avoidance by the Germans, at first, of shelling the town hall at Ypres.
"Some suspicions were aroused by it," he writes, "and the place was searched. In the vaults underneath it, which are of very great extent, was found an enormous quantity of German stores and ammunition sufficient to last them a month and serve as a depot for their attack on Calais.
"It had been put there with the connivance of the Mayor at the time the Germans were in occupation. This explains their desperate efforts to capture the town again. The traitor Mayor was shot. Immediately afterward the Germans shelled the place and smashed up the building and set it on fire."