Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
And thus we straggled on past the French outposts and over the Yser again, and on, on past the field we had lain in all day, on through Brielen to Vlamertinghe, back to billets. But the draft was broken in. It was only the prospect of several days of comparative rest that held us together at all as we floundered over the slippery cobble stones into Vlamertinghe.
Half a mile up the road we seated ourselves on a disused trench and lit cigarettes, while I began to read a home letter which I had found at Brielen. An aeroplane flying low overhead dropped some fire-balls. Immediately a violent artillery cannonade began.
Possibly it was never known before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the Mecca of the British Army. But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets.
As we climbed into the car, which had been placed for shelter behind the strongest looking wall in the town, and slowly started for Ypres, a section of the 10th Canadian Battalion came along with our friend, Major Maclaren, whom I had talked to at Brielen earlier in the afternoon, at its head. I waved my hand to him and called "good luck." He waved his hand in answer with a cheery smile.
I felt that each point of interest ought to have been labelled in Mr Frederic Villiers' handwriting "German shrapnel bursting over Kemmel our guns this is a dead horse." I first saw Ypres on the 6th November. I was sent off with a bundle of routine matter to the 1st Corps, then at Brielen, a couple of miles N.W. of Ypres. It was a nightmare ride. The road was pavé in the centre villainous pavé.
We did not stay long in this billet, however, as we shifted the following day to a farm on the Brielen road. It was well we did so, for the enemy bombarded the town again and dropped one shell in our old billet a few hours after we left. The farm we moved into is worthy of a little description, as it was typical of any farm in Flanders.
Two days later the Battalion was relieved by the East Surrey Regiment, and returned to Brielen huts. During the next few days the artillery fire increased considerably on both sides, and just before dawn on Whit Monday, the 24th May, the Germans launched their gas attack.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking