FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92  
93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   >>   >|  
uttresses and towers. When I went there two months later I saw Ypres as it stood through the years of the war that followed, changing only in the disintegration of its ruin as broken walls became more broken and fallen houses were raked into smaller fragments by new bombardments, for there was never a day for years in which Ypres was not shelled. The approach to it was sinister after one had left Poperinghe and passed through the skeleton of Vlamertinghe church, beyond Goldfish Chateau... For a long time Poperinghe was the last link with a life in which men and women could move freely without hiding from the pursuit of death; and even there, from time to time, there were shells from long-range guns and, later, night-birds dropping high-explosive eggs. Round about Poperinghe, by Reninghelst and Locre, long convoys of motor-wagons, taking up a new day's rations from the rail-heads, raised clouds of dust which powdered the hedges white. Flemish cart-horses with huge fringes of knotted string wended their way between motor-lorries and gun-limbers. Often the sky was blue above the hop-gardens, with fleecy clouds over distant woodlands and the gray old towers of Flemish churches and the windmills on Mont Rouge and Mont Neir, whose sails have turned through centuries of peace and strife. It all comes back to me as I write--that way to Ypres, and the sounds and the smells of the roads and fields where the traffic of war went up, month after month, year after year. That day when I saw it first, after the gas-attack, was strangely quiet, I remember. There was "nothing doing," as our men used to say. The German gunners seemed asleep in the noonday sun, and it was a charming day for a stroll and a talk about the raving madness of war under every old hedge. "What about lunch in Dickebusch on the way up?" asked one of my companions. There were three of us. It seemed a good idea, and we walked toward the village which then--they were early days!--looked a peaceful spot, with a shimmer of sunshine above its gray thatch and red-tiled roofs. Suddenly one of us said, "Good God!" An iron door had slammed down the corridors of the sky and the hamlet into which we were just going was blotted out by black smoke, which came up from its center as though its market-place had opened up and vomited out infernal vapors. "A big shell that!" said one man, a tall, lean-limbed officer, who later in the war was sniper-in-chief of the B
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92  
93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Poperinghe
 

Flemish

 

clouds

 
broken
 
towers
 
charming
 

stroll

 

madness

 

raving

 

Dickebusch


walked
 
companions
 

noonday

 

gunners

 

attack

 

traffic

 

smells

 

fields

 

strangely

 

German


village
 

remember

 

months

 
asleep
 

market

 
opened
 
vomited
 

infernal

 

center

 

uttresses


vapors

 

officer

 
sniper
 
limbed
 

blotted

 
sunshine
 

shimmer

 

thatch

 

peaceful

 

sounds


looked

 

Suddenly

 
corridors
 

hamlet

 
slammed
 
dropping
 

shells

 

pursuit

 
explosive
 

taking