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On December 12 I was sent forward to take over B.H.Q. in Ypres, at a convent at the N.E. corner of the city. The higher floors of the convent were all in ruins, but the ground floors were more or less intact, and in these we had our rooms and offices. The mess room was under a pile of rubbish outside.
The battle on the ridge had been over for some time, but neither side was yet prepared to disperse its heavy concentration of guns. But the heavy firing was gradually, very gradually, becoming less severe. Ypres itself had been badly knocked about during the great battle. Most of the troops billeted in Ypres lived underground, but whilst I was living there it was never severely shelled.
Who will sing the great chant in honor of the 100,000 who held Ypres against half a million, and locked the door to the Channel? Who will sing the bulldog fighting qualities of Rawlinson's 7th division, which held the line in those October days until reinforcements came, and which, at the end of the fight, mustered 44 officers out of 400, and only 2336 men out of 23,000?
Towns were occupied to-day by the Germans, to-morrow by the Allies; from Nieuport on past Dixmude and beyond Ypres the dykes had been opened and the low country was one vast lake. The only approaches from French territory were half a dozen roads built high above the water line, which rendered them capable of stubborn defence. Dunkirk was thronged with reserves English, Belgian and French.
Low Visibility, a pro-German who was in his element in the Ypres salient in midwinter, delighted in rain, mist, fog and thick summer haze anything that prevented observers from seeing the burst of shells, transformed shell-craters into miniature lakes and fields into mire to founder charges, and stalled guns. High Visibility was as merry as his wicked brother was dour.
Heroic its history; but no battle honours equal that of the regiment's part in the second battle of Ypres; and no heroes of the regiment's story, whom you picture in imagination with haloes of glory in the wish that you might have met them in the flesh in their scarlet coats, are the equal of these survivors in plain khaki manning a ditch in A.D. 1915, whom anyone may meet.
Being quite ignorant of the whereabouts of his regiment when last heard of they had been in trenches near Ypres and failing to recollect the existence of that autocratic but indispensable genius loci, the R.T.O., Angus took uneasy stock of his surroundings and wondered what to do next. Suddenly a friendly voice at his elbow remarked "There's a queer lot o' bodies hereaboot, sirr."
Early on May 9, 1915, the fighting was continued, and, in the afternoon, the Germans charged from the woods in a vain attempt to take Ypres after a severe bombardment of the British trenches. An attacking party of five hundred was slain north of the town. On the eastern side of the salient there were five distinct attacks.
What use had they had for their horses in the immovable Ypres salient except when they drew back their guns to the billets after their tour of duty? they who had drilled and drilled in evolutions in England under the impression that field guns were a mobile arm!
In order, however, to provide against the commission going beyond its prescribed limits Philip expressly required that the Bishop of Ypres, a man whom he could rely on as a determined zealot for the Romish faith, should be one of the body.
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