From Mons to Loos, being the diary of a supply officer . as if by some giantplough. Here truly the Devil has been theploughman and Death the reaper. Of the historic old town of Ypres scarcelyone stone now rests upon another, and asI stood in the Square, where lay theremains of the once famous Cloth Hall,and surveyed the mournful picture of ruinand desolation around, 1 felt that I shouldraise my hand to my cap and salute thismutilated corpse of what had once been anoble city. The Prussians had rained highexplosive on Ypres till not a house re-mained whole—the majority were piles ofsmouldering,
From Mons to Loos, being the diary of a supply officer . as if by some giantplough. Here truly the Devil has been theploughman and Death the reaper. Of the historic old town of Ypres scarcelyone stone now rests upon another, and asI stood in the Square, where lay theremains of the once famous Cloth Hall,and surveyed the mournful picture of ruinand desolation around, 1 felt that I shouldraise my hand to my cap and salute thismutilated corpse of what had once been anoble city. The Prussians had rained highexplosive on Ypres till not a house re-mained whole—the majority were piles ofsmouldering, evil-smelling rubbish. PoorYpres ! once a city of princes, now a dust-heap 1 Sodom and Gomorrah, those cities ofthe Plain, were not more utterly Gods curse fallen too upon thiscity? Near the remains of the Cloth Hall laythe ruins of the Cathedral, roofless, its floorstrewn with a mass of debris—broken stone,bricks and smashed church furniture, thestone pillars scarred and notched by shellfire. In all directions the town lay in ruins,. > u 2nd N. CHAPELLE and 2nd YPRES. 247 and in appearance resembled a locality thathad suffered from a severe earthquake orvolcanic eruption. Photographs which Iremember of the ill-fated town of St Pierre,in the West Indies, after its destruction bythe volcano Mount Pele, in whose shadow itnestled, bore an astonishing similarity tothe scene around me. Streets were stilldistinctly traceable by the huge ash-heapsalong each side, but of houses no resem-blance remained except portions of outsidewalls still standing here and there, jagged,broken, like the stumps of teeth in an oldmans jaw, an ugly, horrible sight. I wondered what had become of the in-habitants, many of whom had returned toYpres in December and January. Did thebodies of helpless women and tiny childrenlie buried in this deserted ghost of a city ?I wondered especially what fate had befallenmy little acquaintance of the light step andbrave heart who had befriended me t
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918
