Silhouetted against the sky behind him was the gaunt wall of the one-time church tower, its windows looking like the empty sockets of a skull.
Estaires was in no better condition, but here the inhabitants had come back in numbers and were busy at the work of reconstruction. We pa.s.sed "Grime Farm" and "Taffy Farm" on the way to Armentieres, then through a little place called Croix du Bac with notices printed on the walls of the village in German. It had once been their second line.
In the distance Armentieres gave me the impression of being almost untouched, but on closer inspection the terrible part was that only the mere sh.e.l.ls of the houses were left standing. Bailleul was like a city of the dead. I saw no returned inhabitants along its desolate streets.
The Mont des Cats was on our left with the famous monastery at its summit where Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria had been tended by the monks when lying wounded. In return for their kindness he gave orders that the monastery was to be spared, and so it was for some time. But whether he repented of his generosity or not I can"t say. It must certainly have been badly sh.e.l.led since, as its walls now testify. On our right was Kemmel with its pill-boxes making irregular b.u.mps against the sky-line.
One place was pointed out to me as being the site of a once famous tea-garden where a telescope had been installed, for visitors to view the surrounding country.
We pa.s.sed through St. Jans Capelle, Berthen, Boschepe, and so to the frontier into Belgium. The first sight that greeted our eyes was Remy siding, a huge cemetery, one of the largest existing, where rows upon rows of wooden crosses stretched as far as the eye could see.
We drove to Ypres via Poperinghe and Vlamertinge and saw the famous "Goldfish" Chateau on our left, which escaped being sh.e.l.led, and was then gutted by an accidental fire!
I was surprised to see anything at all of the once beautiful Cloth Hall.
We took some snaps of the remains. A lot of discoloured bones were lying about among the _debris_ disinterred from the cemetery by the bombardments.
Heaps of powdered bricks were all that remained of many of the houses.
The town gasometer had evidently been blown completely into the air, what was left of it was perched on its head in a drunken fashion.
Beyond the gate of the town on the Menin Road stood a large unpainted wooden shanty. I wondered what it could be and thought it was possibly a Y.M.C.A. hut. Imagine my surprise on closer inspection to see painted over the door in large black letters "Ypriana Hotel"! It had been put up by an enterprising _Belge_. Somehow it seemed a desecration to see this cheap little building on that sacred spot.
The Ypres-Menin Road stretched in front of us as far as the eye could see, disappearing into the horizon. On either hand was No-man"s-land. I had seen wrecked villages on the Belgian front in 1915 and was more or less accustomed to the sight, but this was different. It was more terrible than any ruins I had ever seen. For utter desolation I never want to behold anything worse.
The ground was pock-marked with sh.e.l.l-holes and craters. Old tanks lay embedded in the mud, their sides pierced by shot and sh.e.l.l, and worst of all by far were the trees. Mere skeletons of trees standing gaunt and jagged, stripped naked of their bark; mute testimony of the horrors they had witnessed. Surely of all the lonely places of the earth this was by far the worst? The ground looked lighter in some places than in others, where the powdered bricks alone showed where a village had once stood.
There were those whose work it was to search for the scattered graves and bring them in to one large cemetery. Just beyond "h.e.l.l-fire Corner"
a padre was conducting a burial service over some such of these where a cemetery had been formed. We next pa.s.sed Birr Cross Roads with "Sanctuary Wood" on our left. Except that the lifeless trees seemed to be more numerous, nothing was left to indicate a wood had ever been there.
The more I saw the more I marvelled to think how the men could exist in such a place and not go mad, yet we were seeing it under the most ideal conditions with the fresh green gra.s.s shooting up to cover the ugly rents and scars.
Many of the craters half-filled with water already had duckweed growing.
Words are inadequate to express the horror and loneliness of that place which seemed peopled only by the ghosts of those "Beloved soldiers, who love rough life and breath, not less for dying faithful to the last."
We drove on to Hooge and turned near Geluvelt, making our way back silently along that historic road which had been kept in repair by gangs of workmen whose job it was to fill in the sh.e.l.l holes as fast as they were made.
As we wound our way up the steep hill to Ca.s.sel with its narrow streets and high, Spanish-looking houses, the sun was setting and the country lay below us in a wonderful panorama. The cherry-trees bordering the steep hill down the other side stood out like miniature snowstorms against the blue haze of the evening. We got back to find the Sat.u.r.day evening hop in progress (life still seemed to be formed of paradoxes).
It was held in the mess hut, where the b.u.mpy line down the middle of the floor was appropriately called "Vimy Ridge," and the place where the sh.e.l.l hole had been further up "Kennedy Crater." The floor was exceedingly springy just there, but it takes a good deal to "cramp the style" of a F.A.N.Y., and details of this sort only add to the general enjoyment.
The next day I went down to the old convoy and saw my beloved "Susan"
again, apparently not one whit the worse for the valiant war work she had done. Everything looked exactly the same, and to complete the picture, as I arrived, I saw two F.A.N.Y.s quietly snaffling some horses for a ride round the camp while their owners remained blissfully unconscious in the mess. I felt things were indeed unchanged!
That evening I hunted out all my French friends. The old flower lady in the Rue uttered a shriek, dropped her flowers, and embraced me again and again. Then there was the _Pharmacie_ to visit, the paper man, the pretty flapper, Monsieur and Madame from the "Omelette" Shop, and a host of others. I also saw the French general. For a moment he was puzzled--obviously he "knew the face but couldn"t put a name to it,"
then his eye fell on the ribbon. "_Mon enfant_," was all he said, and without any warning he opened his arms and I received a smacking kiss on both cheeks! _Quel emotion!_ Everyone was so delighted, I felt the burden of the last two years slipping off my shoulders.
Quite by chance I was put in my old original "cue." I counted the doors up the pa.s.sage. Yes, it must be the one, there could be no doubt about it, and on looking up at the walls I could just discern the shadowy outlines of the panthers through a new coating of colour-wash.
The hospital where I had been was shut up and empty, and was shortly going to become a Casino again. How good it was to be back with the F.A.N.Y.s! I had just caught them in time, for they were to be demobilised on the following Sunday and I began to realise, now that I was with them again, just how terribly I had missed their gay companionship.
It was a singular and happy coincidence that on the second anniversary of the day I lost my leg, I should be cantering over the same fields at Peuplinghe where "Flanders" had so gallantly pursued "puss" that day so long ago, or was it really only yesterday?
FRANCE, _May 9th, 1919._