?

Rest meant tent boards under frozen canvas, but it was rest. On that
weary morning even the uninviting outline of Reninghelst village seemed
like home.

THE HISTORIC TRIANGLE

CHAPTER VIII

THE HISTORIC TRIANGLE

The last time I saw the Ypres salient was from the shoulder of the
Scherpenberg. The torn church tower of Dickebusch stood up darkly near a
leaden gleam of water. From St. Eloi in front of it trenches ran curving
up to Hooge and back again to within, on the north, a mile and a half of
Ypres, enclosing the level, sodden farmland four miles across its base,
two from base to nose, which is the Ypres salient. A reluctant dawn was
turning the darkness to a dull and threatening day, and as it grew
lighter the famous miles slowly came into view. It was the hour of
'Stand-to.' All round the Salient, and north and south of it far beyond
the horizon, the trenches were filled with watching men, weary from the
night's toil at digging or wiring or 'carrying' fatigues, but standing
ready until the dangerous hour of dawn should pass. It had been an
anxious week, for the wind was blowing from the enemy's lines, and night
after night the long warning call of the gas-gongs, followed in a moment
by the awakening of all the Salient into a ring of darting flames and
tremendous concussions as the guns were called into action, had brought
all ranks to their feet. But this morning no sound broke the strange
silence. It was hard to believe that hidden beneath the soil tens of
thousands of men were silently standing face to face. As the dawn lifted
I knew that everywhere in the ten-mile ring the British soldier was
boiling the water for his tea, very strong and very sweet, the first of
half a dozen tea brewings he would make that day. Another day of the war
had begun.

Surely so long as great deeds appeal to the British race those weary
miles will be always sacred. Within them lie the unnumbered British
dead, 'the dear, pitiful, august dead.' Comrades of the dauntless
warriors of Gallipoli, comrades of the sailors who have gone down
fighting in the cold waters of the North Sea, brothers of all brave men
suffering for a clean cause, they leave the issue with us. As long as
the British Empire endures, and it will endure so long as it works for
God and no longer, the memory of the heroes of the Ypres salient will
live and glow.

'I hate war: that is why I am fighting,' said one of them. They fought
not merely for