it was indeed a
city of the dead. To Tom the ruins of the great Cloth Hall and the
Cathedral were not the most terrible; what appealed to him most were
the empty houses in which things were left by the panic-stricken
people. Bedsteads twisted into shapeless masses; clothes half burnt;
remnants of pieces of cloth which tradesmen had been in the act of
cutting and stitching; children's toys, and thousands of other things
which suggested to the boy the life the people had been living. Not a
bird sang, not even a street dog roamed amidst the shapeless
desolation; the ghastly horror of it all possessed him. Great gaping
holes in the old ramparts of the city; trees torn up by their roots and
scorched by deadly fire: this was Ypres, not destroyed by the
necessities of war, but by pure devilry.

At last Tom's turn came to go up to the front trenches. It was with a
strange feeling at heart that he, with others, crept along the pave
road towards the communication trench. They had to be very careful,
because this road was constantly swept by the German machine guns.
Presently, when they came to a house used as a first dressing station
close to the beginning of the communication trench, Tom felt his heart
grow cold. Still, with set teeth, and a hard look in his eyes, he
groped his way along the trench, through Piccadilly, and Haymarket, and
Bond Street, and Whitehall (for in this manner do the soldiers name the
various parts of the zigzag cuttings through the clay): while all the
time he could hear the pep, pep, pep, pep of the machine guns, and the
shrieking of the shells.

There was no romance in war now, it was a grim, ghastly reality. After
following the lines of the trenches for well-nigh an hour he was
informed that he had now reached the front line and was within a
hundred or a hundred and fifty yards of the Huns. For the moment there
was a comparative quiet, only occasionally did he hear the sound of a
gun, while the shrieking of the shells was less frequent. Danger
seemed very far away; he was in a deep hole in the ground, and above
the earthworks were great heaps of sand-bags. How could he be hurt?
The men whom his company was sent to relieve seemed in high good
spirits too, they laughed and talked and bandied jokes. "There seems
no danger here," thought Tom. An hour passed and still all was
comparatively quiet.

"I would like to see those blooming German trenches," said a Lancashire
lad, "and I will too