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We had some coffee in a hut on the Poperinghe road, about a mile from the town; then walked on to the Switch Road, right along that and on to the main Poperinghe-Vlamertinghe road. Here Beesley and his sergeant went one way and Sergeant Clews and I went another right along the main road. We had a drink of citron at a little hut named Villa Franca.
There was no look of malingering on the faces of those boys who were being carried pick-a-back to the ambulance-trains at Remy siding, near Poperinghe, with both feet crippled and tied up in bundles of cotton-wool. The pain was martyrizing, like that of men tied to burning fagots for conscience' sake. Other battalions in the Ypres salient suffered as much.
Of my runners and signallers I was especially proud, and at Company Headquarters there was, of course, the redoubtable Sergeant-Major Brooks, who besides being a great fighter possessed also high organising powers. My total strength on reaching Poperinghe was over 200, which shows that at this time the Battalion was well found in men.
Since we passed, a few hours before, another car had been wrecked by the road. One sees these cars everywhere, lying on their sides, turned turtle in ditches, bent and twisted against trees. No one seems to be hurt in these accidents; at least one hears nothing of them, if they are. And now we were back at Poperinghe again. The Commandant had his headquarters in the house of a notary.
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.
We found that our transport had been moved further back to a field on the Ypres Poperinghe Road to avoid shelling. We were all thoroughly done out when we arrived and we had a good sleep. Next morning we had roll call and counted our losses. It was the saddest moment in the history of our regiment.
It is a good macadam road, made, doubtless by perfidious Albion's money, just before the war. Poperinghe has been an age-long rival of Ypres. Even to-day its inhabitants delight to tell you the old municipal scandals of the larger town, and the burghers of Ypres, if they see a citizen of Poperinghe in their streets, believe he has come to gloat over their misfortunes.
Gibson stalked fearlessly down to where his colonel lay, picked him up, got him under better cover and dressed his wounds, and that night after dark they got him out. There was much gloom and sorrow among the British Columbians that night for they all loved their colonel and they knew that there was very little hope for him. He died the following day at Poperinghe.
You people who have stayed at home can never realize what "leave" means to a soldier after eight months in the trenches and I, for one, will not attempt the impossible by trying to describe the sensation. We packed our kits and hiked to Poperinghe, where, after sitting up all night, we took train at four o'clock A.M., arriving at Boulogne about noon and were in "Blighty" by four in the afternoon.
I remember that we passed a regiment of Moroccans half- way to Poperinghe, and I looked back from the car to watch them pacing up and down between their fires, which glowed upon their red cloaks and white robes and their grave, bearded Arab faces.
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