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In March of 1915 I saw the first fifteen-inch howitzer open fire. We called this monster "grandma," and there was a little group of generals on the Scherpenberg, near Kemmel, to see the effect of the first shell. Its target was on the lower slope of the Wytschaete Ridge, where some trenches were to be attacked for reasons only known by our generals and by God.
Forty-eight hours, however, in the war-zone, at a time of active fighting, and that long before any other person of my sex had been allowed to approach the actual firing-line on the British front, were not like other hours; and, perhaps, from much thinking of them, the Salient and the approaches to it, as I saw them in 1916 from the Scherpenberg hill, had become a constant image in the mind.
As we passed through the rolling land of Belgium under the brow of "The Scherpenberg," with Mount Kemmel over to the right honeycombed with dugouts, it was difficult to believe that, locked in a death grapple, not three miles away, were thousands of soldiers living underground like moles, and that at any moment the air might be filled with shells carrying death and destruction.
But Kemmel was an isolated height, and the Germans were beaten in the valleys which separated it from the Scherpenberg. Their attacks reached a climax on the 29th, and after some partial success were everywhere defeated. Local fighting continued spasmodically till late in May, but it was clear that Ludendorff's second offensive had come to an end like his first.
But with the end of 1915, the first stage, the elementary stage, of the new Armies came to an end. When I stood, in March 1916, on the Scherpenberg hill, looking out over the Salient, new conditions reigned.
But on this unnecessary horror of war I do not mean to dwell. I shall, however, quote from my War Diary an account of a visit to the Scherpenberg, because it gives a glimpse of a side of war too often neglected or ignored.
The effort began with an intense bombardment on the 25th, and a few hours later the Germans had captured the village and hill of Kemmel; our forces were driven back to a line running in front of Dickebusch lake, La Clytte, the Scherpenberg, and Locre. Mt. Kemmel had been regarded as the key to the position, and it looked as though the range would fall.
Only, instead of seeing Ypres from the shelter of the Scherpenberg Windmill, as a distant phantom in the horizon mists, beyond the shell-bursts in the battle-field below us, we were now to go through Ypres itself, then wholly forbidden ground, and out beyond it into some of the ever-famous battle-fields that lie north and south of the Ypres-Menin road.
Perhaps as we watched these bursting shells were killing our own friends. The region of St. Eloi was cut off by the Scherpenberg Mountain and to the left of that again we could see with wonderful clearness the ruins of Ypres. As we watched, great clouds of dust went up at intervals from the square. The tower of St.
But on this occasion, instead of seeing, as I had seen from the Scherpenberg, the pomp and circumstance of war, the view on that particular August afternoon from the Mont des Cats was apparently one of perfect peace. The opposing armies lay quiet in their trenches. Otherwise the pacific fallacy was for the moment complete.
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