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This same thing happened to us once when we were sleeping in the convent school at Voormezeele, when all the statues on the walls were hurled down upon us by a large shell which struck the building. The boys used to take these sacred effigies and place them on graves of their dead friends.
Nearly every battalion of the Second Canadian Division had retaken one or more of them but, as it only resulted in additional loss of life, it was decided by the higher command to give it up and endeavor to reestablish our front along its original line. We went in via Voormezeele, a town of several thousand inhabitants before the war, now a pile of ruins. From here a pavé road ran directly to St.
It was not until the tenth century that the representations of the Crucifixion showed Our Lord as dead; it was much later before the emphasis was laid on agony and despair. Once from among the debris of the convent in Voormezeele I rescued such a representation of the Body of Christ, limbs gone, broken arms outstretched, and it seemed a symbol. But that is not the final truth, defeat and despair.
As one looked from the windmill, Poperinghe with its prominent church spire was to the left and it was quite impossible to discern anything abnormal in its appearance. It looked even then like an ordinary prosperous Flemish town. In the foreground, that is between the Scherpenberg and Ypres, lay what everyone calls "Dickybush" and Voormezeele, or as the soldiers would say, Vermicelli.
The French at Locre and the British at Voormezeele repulsed every attack, thrusting the enemy back whenever he gained a footing in advanced positions, and firmly holding every point around Ypres at the end of the day. General von Arnim's losses were particularly staggering at Locre, where he used battalion after battalion in a vain attempt to hold the village, a key to Mount Rouge.
The region before Ypres is a great lake, and therefore impassable. The whole country between our Amiens front and Paris is mined and will be blown up should we attempt to pass." The preliminary bombardment southwest of Ypres April 29 started in the early morning and took in the ten-mile front from Meteren, west of Bailleul, to Voormezeele, two miles south of Ypres.
We were only able to get as far as Voormezeele, where we stopped in the ruins of the convent school, and dropping on the stone floor slept like the dead for twenty-four hours. The place was being shelled all this time but none knew or cared.
It consisted of perhaps fifteen or twenty buildings of the substantial brick and iron construction characteristic of all Flemish towns and was situated at the intersection of the two main roads paved with granite blocks, one running to Ypres and the other through Voormezeele. The village itself, except for two or three outlying buildings, was inside our lines.
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