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Updated: June 1, 2025
I'm afraid I was rather a canker in his village. One day, my dear old friend turned up, the same who accompanied me on leave to England. He didn't know we were having our rest, and searched for me first behind Wulverghem. He there heard where we were, and came on. He was rather a star in a military way, and could, therefore, get hold of a car now and again.
Thence returning to the wood we sampled White Lodge, the Warwick's home under the steep wooded bluff of Hill 63, where the rats made merry among the dirt and unburied food; also La Plus Douce, a pastoral but dangerous spot, where the Douve flowed muddily amidst neglected water-meadows stretching along to Wulverghem with its battered church tower showing among the trees.
As this hill, Spanbroek Molen on the map, which lies between Wulverghem and Wytschaete was held by the Boche, our trenches which were on its slopes were overlooked, and we had to be most careful not to expose ourselves anywhere near the front line, for to do so meant immediate death at the hands of his snipers, who were far more accurate than any others we have met since.
This was a decidedly better suggestion, a reprieve, in fact, as prior to this remark my bedroom for the night looked like being a borrowed ground sheet slung over some charred rafters which were leaning against a wall in the yard. I followed along behind the Colonel down the road, down the corduroy boards, and out at the old moated farm not far from Wulverghem.
After one of these expeditions I would go on back across the plain, along the corduroy boards or by the bank of the river, to our farm. Our farm was, as I have remarked, a mile from the trenches at the nearest part, and about a mile and a half from the furthest. Wulverghem was about half a mile behind the farm.
The conversations we had with the present owners made it quite clear that warm times were the vogue round there. Altogether we could see we were in for a "bit of a time." We cleared off back to Neuve Eglise that night, and next day took those trenches over. This was the beginning of my life at Wulverghem. When we got in, late that night, we found that the post had arrived some time before.
When first I came to a sign-post that told me how to get to a village I could not reach with my life, I thought of those hills above Witzenhausen. From Wulverghem to Messines is exactly two kilometres. It is ludicrous. Again, one afternoon I was riding over the pass between Mont Noir and Mont Vidaigne.
But, however that may be, we were now booked for Wulverghem, or rather the trenches which lie along the base of the Messines ridge, about a mile in front of that shattered hamlet. Two days after our tour of inspection we started off to take over.
Their advance here was slower, but by the 16th they had mastered Wytschaete, Wulverghem, Neuve Eglise, Bailleul, and Meteren, and were facing the line of hills running from Mt. Kemmel to the Mt. des Cats. British and French reinforcements were now arriving in considerable numbers, and Ludendorff would have been prudent to rest on his laurels.
I left the church, and looked about some of the other houses, but none proved as pathetically interesting as the church and the vicar's house, so I took my way out across the fields again towards the Douve farm. Not a soul about anywhere. Wulverghem lay there, empty, wrecked and deserted.
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