Ypres

“ It is not empty as Ypres is empty: troops are quartered in the cellars, and at the approach of our motor knots of cheerful zouaves came swarming out of the ground like ants. But Ypres is majestic in death, poor Nieuport gruesomely comic. About its splendid nucleus of mediaeval architecture a modern town had grown up; and nothing stranger can be pictured than the contrast between the streets of flimsy houses, twisted like curl-papers, and the ruins of the Gothic Cathedral and the Cloth Market. It is like passing from a smashed toy to the survival of a prehistoric cataclysm. ”

“ If Ypres is to be praised appropriately as a still delightful old city that has managed to retain to a quite singular degree the outward aspect and charm of the Middle Ages, one feels that one has left one's self without any proper stock of epithets with which to appraise at its proper value the charm and romance of Bruges. Of late years, it is true, this world-famed capital of West Flanders has lost something of its old somnolence and peace. ”

“ For the love and devotion of innumerable generations there had kept intact on the earth a wonderful corner of the twelfth century, and we, arriving in front of this marvel, whilst it was dissolving, surprised the dream at a moment when it was vanishing for ever.
All the rest of the world was plunged in the barbarism of the Middle Ages when the Flemish peace had Ypres for its centre. It was the wealthy and serious merchants of Ypres who created the Halles, the market of the world, the capital of business, the incomparable seat of commerce, the parliament of rulers and of people. ”

“ The city of Ypres was the capital of our battlefields in Flanders from the beginning to the end of the war, and the ground on which it stands, whether a new city rises there or its remnants of ruin stay as a memorial of dreadful things, will be forever haunted by the spirit of those men of ours who passed through its gates to fight in the fields beyond or to fall within its ramparts. ”

“ And, day by day as the war goes on, the tragedy of Ypres grows greater. Each shell wrecks a little more of what was once a home, each crash and falling of bricks brings a little more pain to a breaking heart. The ruins of Ypres are glorious and noble, and we are proud to defend them, but the quiet, simple people of Ypres cannot even find one brick on another of their homes. ”

“ Beyond the flats and wind-mills to our left were the invisible German lines, and the staff-officer who was with us leaned forward to caution our chauffeur: "No tooting between here and Ypres." There was still a good deal of movement on the road, though it was less crowded with troops than near Poperinghe; but as we passed through the last village and approached the low line of houses ahead, the silence and emptiness widened about us. That low line was Ypres; every monument that marked it, that gave it an individual outline, is gone. It is a town without a profile. ”

“ If we have pledged our honour to Belgium, we are pledged to the hilt to guard the soil of Ypres inviolate from the heel of the living enemy. It is only a heap of ruins, but it is an eternal memorial of British valour. It is only a shell-swept graveyard, but the graves are those of our heroic dead. ”

“ We were nearing Ypres, that shell-battered city of Flanders. White balls of smoke here and there were bursting among the ruins, showing that the Huns were still shelling it. What a frightful state the earth was in. For miles and miles around it had the appearance of a sieve, with hundreds of thousands of shell-holes, and like a beautiful green ribbon, winding away as far as the eye could see, was that wonderful yet terrible strip of ground between the lines, known as "No Man's Land." ”

“ The spirit of Ypres was abroad, impregnating those new to her. From the very morning when, accompanying a harassed, jumpy acting C.R.A. on his round of battery inspections, I had first seen her, I had felt the spell upon me. It was like grey skies and a wind in the east, the quintessence of sombreness. The intervals of quiet could not be called peace; they served only to intensify the solitude. ”

“ Ypres is an uncanny place.
We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops, pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt for the procureur du roi—who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to Poperinghe—we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely boy, who regarded A——, the Staff officer accompanying me, with a hypnotic stare. ”

“ Outside, the noise grew ever louder. [Pg 36] The roar of the cannon, the rolling of the carriages, Paris omnibuses, provision and ambulance cars, the continual passage of cavalry and foot soldiers, and the motor-cars passing with lightning-like speed, made the quiet, sleepy little town of Ypres as animated as London’s busiest streets. At night even the Allied regiments poured in, profiting by the obscurity to hide their movements from the Germans ”

“ For it is a countryside of interminable straight lines—straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our occupation, as you leave G.H.Q. for the Base, you exchange these plains of sticky clay and stagnant dykes for a pleasant country of undulating downs and noble beech woods, and one seems to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency.
It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. ”

“ For an Englishman to make a journey to Ypres is like paying a visit to the birth-place or residence of an ancestor, of whose name, deeds, and whereabouts one’s family has preserved dim traditions, which are growing dimmer every day. ”

“ Who will sing the destruction of the Royal Scots, two weeks later, in the battle of Ypres? Who will sing the arrival of General Moussy, and of the French corps on the last day of that first battle of Ypres, when a motley gathering of cooks and laborers with staff officers and dismounted cavalry, in shining helmets, flung themselves pellmell into a bayonet charge with no bayonets, to relieve the hard-pressed English division under General Bulfin? And did it. Who will sing the great chant in honor of the 100,000 who held Ypres against half a million, and locked the door to the Channel? ”

“ The Market Hall of Ypres has always been a communal building. In the Middle Ages it was the business center of the cloth makers, the weavers. It has seen popular revolts and rioting. It has known agony and passion, joy and pride. For centuries it has stood there, the wonder of Ypres.
ÉMILE VERHAEREN
Born at St. Amand, Belgium, on the River Scheldt, May, 1855; died at Rouen, France, November, 1916. Verhaeren, a patriot of exalted inspiration, was one of the finest poets of his generation. He “made poetry realize the modern world.” ”

“ On the way to Ypres—crown and climax of the tour—the car passed Lillers and Hazebrouck, places never to be forgotten by hearts that beat in the battles of Flanders. [Pg 331] Then came the frontier at Steenwoorde; and they were actually in Belgium, passing Poperinghe to Ypres, the most famous British battleground of the war.
When Brian was fighting, and when you were on earth, Padre, everyone talked about the "Ypres Salient." Now, though for soldiers Ypres will always be the "salient" since the battle of Wytschaete Ridge, the material salient has vanished. ”

“ The Ypres salient is here seen from a knoll some six miles south-west of the city, which is marked, near the centre of the drawing, by the dominant ruin of the cathedral. The German front line is on the heights beyond, Hooge being a little to the spectator’s right of the city and Zillebeke slightly more to the right again. Dickebusch lies about half way between the eye and Ypres. The fields in sight are covered with crops, varied by good woodland. To a visitor coming from the Somme battlefield the landscape looks rich and almost peaceful. ”

“ On the 12th the Belgian Army assembled in the area Ostend—Dixmude—Furnes—Nieuport, but on the 15th withdrew entirely behind the Yser to the north of Ypres.
The French Naval Division and other troops which had been covering the Belgian retreat were at Dixmude and Nieuport. A French Territorial Division from Cassel had been moved to Ypres.
On the 14th it was reported that about 10,000 German troops from Antwerp were moving on Bruges and Roulers, and that another German Division from Antwerp had reached Courtrai. ”

“ That the famous old town, quietly asleep in its plain, should be shattered and ruined; that so many hopes and ambitions can be blasted in so few hours; that young bodies can be crushed, in a fraction of a second, to masses of lifeless, bleeding pulp! The glorious tragedy of Ypres will never be written, for so many who could have spoken are dead, and so many who live will never speak—you can but guess their stories from the dull pain in their eyes, and from the lips that they close tightly to stop the sobs. ”

“ Men who fought at Ypres will say that they noticed no loss of moral in the enemy, and with this we agree; we only wish to insist that there were indications which had not escaped the eyes of the German Command. As to the hard, heart-breaking fighting of the Battles of Ypres, 1917, it is only just to the gallant French and British troops to point out once more the many advantages that lay with their enemies. ”

“ The Casemates and Dugouts on the inner side of the old fortifications of Ypres were the refuge of hundreds of the inhabitants of Ypres—especially those who had no cellars of their own—in 1914-15.
PLATE VII.
YPRES FROM THE LILLE GATE.
This view is taken from the City Wall above the South or Lille Gate of the City. The church of which some white ruins are seen is St. Pierre. The whole of the bare ground in the foreground was once covered closely with buildings, but of these hardly a trace remains. Some beginnings of reconstruction are already to be seen. ”

“ The economic decline of Flanders in the fifteenth century has been obscured by the glowing descriptions of luxurious life in which the Court chroniclers of Philip and Charles abound. The great industry which had filled the famous Cloth-hall of Ypres steadily declined; till about the time of the death of Mary a city population which had formerly amounted to something like 100,000 had fallen to about one-twentieth of that total. Ypres, like some other of the Flemish towns, had suffered from special causes, but there was one which fundamentally affected them all. ”

“ Yperman was sent by his fellow-townsmen to Paris in order to study surgery, apparently at the expense of the municipality, [Pg 132] because they wanted to have a good surgeon in their town, and Paris seemed the best school at that time. Ypres, so familiar now as the scene of bloody battles, had become even before the war one of the less important cities even of Belgium, with less than 20,000 people. It was in the thirteenth century one of the greatest commercial cities of Europe, and probably had several hundred thousand inhabitants. ”

“ Yet the echoes of this war of horrors reach us, even in our haven of rest. As I write, news reaches us from our chaplain (Monsieur de Seagher, Principal du Collège Episcopal, Ypres) who has returned to Ypres to find his college entirely pillaged and almost in ruins. He says that a third of the population has already re-entered the town; all are in dismay at the heart-rending sight which meets their gaze. As to our convent, he writes: ‘The state of your Abbey is also deplorable. The shells have made great havoc there. The French soldiers occupy it at present. ”

“ At last we decided to try to find a lodging for the night, and get into Ypres the first thing in the morning. We stopped at the first group of houses which came in sight. What was our joy to see [Pg 132] a motor outside. Perhaps we could get a ride home. We addressed ourselves to the French soldier who was standing by, and asked if by chance he was going to Poperinghe that night. “Yes!” was the rather laconic reply. “And would it be possible to take us also?” That was another thing. We must wait for the officer, who would be back, perhaps, in half an hour, perhaps later. ”

“ Through the woods to the east of Ypres there is one great main road. Beginning at Menin—that town is just on the Belgian side of the French frontier—this broad, well-paved highway runs nearly straight as an avenue into Ypres.9 The distance is ten miles. From Ypres the great road is continued towards the coast until at Furnes it joins on to the great road which runs along the coast from Ostend through Nieuport, Dunkirk, and Gravelines to Calais. ”

“ This, then, was our first introduction to the Ypres salient. Many times in the early days we had hovered on its brink, and it seemed strange that we should be only now making its close acquaintance, eighteen months afterwards. Although we felt ourselves a little disappointed with our renewed acquaintance with the Flemish fogs and flats, we gradually adapted ourselves to the changed conditions. A year had made a vast difference in our powers of appreciation. ”

“ This castle had been in existence since the 8th century, but only the ruins had survived Norman invasions.
The town, favourably situated in the centre of the maritime plain with its rich grassy meadows intersected by canals, prospered exceedingly. A numerous population sprang up of merchants and artisans, whose chief sources of wealth were the manufacture and sale of cloth.
As early as the 12th, but especially in the 13th and 14th centuries, Ypres, thanks to important privileges granted by the Counts of Flanders, became a considerable town, and possessed 4,000 looms. ”