Universally the French officers praised General Sir Douglas Haig. He had completely won their admiration at Ypres.
"But the best of the British Staff work," said another French officer, "is that it is improving. The English are not afraid to admit they don't know, and are quick to absorb new ideas. Give them time."
I have quoted the more trenchant criticisms that came to my ears, for they fell from the lips of the keenest and most brilliant French Staff officers, invariably those who held the British Tommy in the highest possible esteem.
These officers were from the class of man one would choose to put in charge of a dry dock, a line of railway, a huge business or a gigantic manufactory. They impressed me as good "business men." More than a few British Staff officers I met, particularly in the Cavalry arm of the Service, were equally clever, and every whit as keen on their work, but no one who wished to be impartial could fail to note the inclusion now and then, on the Staff, of men to whom one would never dream of entrusting the management of a large commercial organisation or the conduct of an important factory plant.
The 3rd and 2nd Cavalry Divisions having each done ten days of trench occupation in the Ypres Salient, on February 23rd, the 1st Cavalry Division moved to Ypres to take its ten days of duty in the firing line.
The run to Ypres, viâ Steenvoorde and Poperinghe, was a trying one. The road surface was inconceivably damaged and very slippery. All manner of French and British transport and general traffic filled the highway.
face p. 54
face p. 55
In the western edge of Ypres, in front of the first cluster of houses—buildings shell-marked and war-scarred from long bombardment—three grimy mites were playing in the dirt at the street-side. Further on, a trio of little girls in soiled black frocklets were enjoying a game of tag. Across the street they darted, under the wheels of cars and lorries, missing the hoofs of the passing horses by inches. One bright-eyed little girl, out of breath from dodging a fast-drawn artillery limber, took momentary refuge in a ragged gap in a shell-shattered dwelling. As we approached the Grand Place more children were to be seen, then a number of adult townsfolk. Round the gaping ruins of the once beautiful Cloth Hall, in the main square, the number of people in evidence might well have led one to believe that the bombardment of Ypres was past and done with. Ruins, the work of shells and conflagrations, were on all sides, but no one noticed them. French and English soldiers and their officers, with a liberal smattering of civilian Belgians, filled the pavements. Down the Rue de Menin, at the approach of the Menin Bridge, we found the headquarters of General Hubert Gough, of the 2nd Cavalry Division, located in a brewery standing in the shadow of the high moat wall. The trenches lay, roughly, three miles beyond the city walls to the eastward. The junction of the British left with the French right was south of the Menin Road, in front of Zillebeke. The trenches we were to occupy ran east and west and faced south.
Detachments of sturdy French infantry marched past, their uniforms faded to a pale blue. With swinging step, each individual marched to his own time. I admired their fit and willing appearance. They were campaign-worn as to kit and clothing, but campaign-hardened, rather than worn, as to themselves.
A constant stream of people came and went. How long would the civilian population of Ypres remain to pay its toll of dead whenever the Germans decided further to shell the town?
Three women passed, two of them bearing month-old babies in their arms. Noting my interested glance they smiled and waved as they trudged on. What a place for a baby!
An old bent crone, crowned with a richly beaded bonnet of ancient type, in odd incongruity to the ragged condition and mean original state of the remainder of her apparel, hobbled along, pausing now and again to pick up and store safely in her apron small pieces of coal that had been dropped from a passing wagon.
More French soldiers passed. Then a couple of British officers rode by in the picturesque uniform of some Scotch regiment of the line. A transport wagon rumbled by, and behind it came a young girl, with a bucket of water on her head, smilingly exchanging banter with a soldier of the British military police, at the corner of the street.
It was a quiet Spring afternoon, a bit overcast. Hardly to be called lowering, and yet of a stillness that seemed ominous. A day to fit all the mixture of folk going stolidly, carelessly, gaily, or how they would, about their daily tasks.
No one seemed to realise that they were in Ypres—the Ypres which had so often been shattered by shell that the poor old town could hardly be surprised by any sort of new shell-caprice. No one saw the rent walls and gaping holes in every other building. I wondered if they could hear the guns! I could do so. They were hard at it every moment, all the time, from two to three miles distant. It was the old story of familiarity breeding contempt; or perhaps they were true philosophers, these Ypres folk.
General de Lisle ran to Potijze, to the headquarters of General Lefebvre, who commanded the French 18th Division. It seemed ages since I had been in Potijze. Our headquarters were not far beyond it in November, 1914, during the great first battle of Ypres.
On the way from Ypres along the Zonnebeke road we passed bunches of odd little French horse transport wagons. The road was very bad. We progressed in crawfish fashion, most of the way. The pavé was torn terribly by shell-fire, and there was sufficient mud and slime on it to make it extremely slippery. French soldiers were billeted in the dwellings along the road. At the edge of Potijze a dozen young boys and girls stood outside a house.
Returning to General Gough's headquarters we "took them over," as that night we were to relieve the 2nd Cavalry Division troopers in the trench line.
General de Lisle and Colonel Home ran up the Menin Road a kilometre or so, and, leaving the car, walked across the fields past the ruins that will always bear the name of "Cavan's House."
The General told me to put the car in the shelter of a house on the south side of the road, as shell-fire and the Menin Road were never strangers for long. I settled down to wait until the General had concluded his rounds of the prospective positions.
The Ypres-Menin Road will be remembered oh! so long, and oh! so well. It saw rough times.
Field guns near by started to work, and now and then German shells dropped in a field beyond.
The house behind which I was sheltered, in case of a stray shell, was a one-storey affair of modest mien.
Those of its windows which were not shattered were shuttered. Half of the roof had been shorn of its tiles. A shell had wrecked the interior of one end of the building. A glance out of a rear door-way showed a whole collection of shell-holes in the yard a few feet distant.
A door that still remained in position bore four lines of legend:
"Vin a vingt
Sous la Bouteille.
Confiture, allumettes.
Bougies, chocolate."
Glancing through one of the remaining panes of a window by the door, I saw a glass jar containing a couple of sticks of chocolate, beside it three jars of jelly, a box of French matches, a blue paper packet of half a dozen candles, a score of small oranges in one box, and in another, alongside it, seven or eight very dry-looking kippers. Peering through the partly-obscured glass one could see a stolid-looking, red-faced, albino-haired woman.
"Business as usual," with a vengeance! Such an