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If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the inhabitants.
On May 5th the Canadian transport was strung along the roads leading from Ypres and we knew that the division was out for a rest. We hunted out some of our friends in Bailleul, some of the few that were left.
I arrived in Folkestone about 1.45 P.M. and in London about 3.30 P.M. the same day. Though short, it was a happy time, and I returned on May 26, staying one night in Boulogne and reaching Bailleul about midnight on Saturday, May 27. I found that the battalion was still at Locre, but the Brigade had gone back to the line, holding the same trenches on Wytschaete Ridge.
I shall never forget my feelings when one morning in a certain wine-merchant's cellar I saw several eighteen-gallon casks of Bass's Pale Ale. I left Poperinghe in a motor-ambulance, and the Germans shelled it next day, but my latest advices state that the ale is still intact. Across the road from the wine-merchant's is a delectable tea-shop. There is a tea-shop at Bailleul, the "Allies Tea-Rooms."
We reached the other side safely, after a rather choppy crossing, and soon I was on my way to the Front and the front line trenches, if possible. Passing through Bailleul, Armentières and Ploegsteert, I was able to film some hidden batteries in action. As the whole road was in full view of the German lines we had to go very carefully.
The capture of Wancourt and Heninel broke off another fragment of the Siegfried line, while to the north our advance spread up to the gates of Lens; the villages of Bailleul, Willerval, Vimy, Givenchy-en-Gohelle, Angres, and Lievin, with the Double Crassier and several of the suburbs of Lens, fell into our hands.
All through this country between Estaires and Merville, to Steenwerck, Metern, and Bailleul, thousands of civilians had been living on the edge of the battlefields, believing themselves safe behind our lines. Now the line had slipped and they were caught by German shell-fire and German guns, and after nearly four years of war had to abandon their homes like the first fugitives.
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.
The men, sitting around the streets of Bailleul in the sun, looked as if they had seen and experienced more than they could ever tell. One of my officer comrades had gone insane, and another had been so shell shocked that he was of no further use and had been sent to England, the latter was one of those officers whom I had seen in the little club house at Winnezeele.
On the boat I met Gibson. At Boulogne we clambered into the same bus and passed the time in sipping old rum, eating chocolate biscuits, reading the second volume of 'Sinister Street, and sleeping. At St Omer our craving for an omelette nearly lost us the bus. Then we slept. All that I can remember of the rest of the journey is that we stopped near Bailleul. An anxious corporal popped his head in.
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