At Ypres with Best-Dunkley

At Ypres with Best-Dunkley

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Title: At Ypres with Best-Dunkley
Author: Thomas Hope Floyd
Release Date: February 21, 2006 [EBook #17813]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ON ACTIVE SERVICE SERIES

AT YPRES WITH BEST-DUNKLEY
By THOMAS HOPE FLOYD

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN
LANE COMPANY MCMXX Garden City Press, Letchworth, Herts.

TO
ALL RANKS OF THE
SECOND-FIFTH LANCASHIRE FUSILIERS
WHO FELL AT
YPRES
ON THE THIRTY-FIRST OF JULY, 1917
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
"... Henceforth These are our saints.
These that we touched, and kissed, And frowned upon; These that were
frail, yet died because the good Was overthrown.
That they in one dread hour Were terrible Stains not their sainthood,
nor is heaven less sure That they knew hell.
How beautiful they are, How bright their eyes. Their hands have
grasped the key Of Paradise!
They hold it out to us, Our men, our sons ... To us The lonely ones."
--THOMAS MOULT.[1]

FOOTNOTE:
[1] Quoted with Mr. Moult's permission.

FOREWORD
No doubt it will be thought that some apology is necessary for thrusting
upon the public all this mass of matter, relating to many persons and
episodes with whom and with respect to which they may feel that they
are in no way concerned. I quite realize that my action may appear
strange and uncalled for to the superficial observer. But I do not hold
that view. I, personally, have always felt a desire to read this kind of
literature. The Press does not cease to pour forth volumes of memoirs
by leading and prominent persons--matter which is all wanted for a true
understanding of the history of our times. But this is not enough. We
require all the personal narratives we can get; and, in my opinion, the
more personal and intimate, the better. We want narratives by obscure
persons: we want to know and appreciate everybody's outlook upon
public events, whether that outlook be orthodox or unorthodox,
conventional or unconventional. Only thus can we see the recent war in
all its aspects.
The motives which have prompted me to publish this book have been
well expressed by Dr. A. C. Benson in his essay on Authorship in
_From a College Window._ In that volume there occurs the following
striking passage:
"The wonderful thing to me is not that there is so much desire in the
world to express our little portion of the joy, the grief, the mystery of it
all, but that there is so little. I wish with all my heart that there was
more instinct for personal expression; Edward Fitzgerald said that he
wished that we had more lives of obscure persons; one wants to know
what other people are thinking and feeling about it all; what joys they
anticipate, what fears they sustain, how they regard the end and
cessation of life and perception which waits for us all. The worst of it is
that people are often so modest, they think that their own experience is

so dull, so unromantic, so uninteresting. It is an entire mistake. If the
dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or
she thought about his or her life, about work and love, religion and
emotion, it would be a fascinating document. My only sorrow is that
amateurs of whom I have spoken above will not do this; they rather
turn to external and impersonal impressions, relate definite things, what
they see on their travels, for instance, describing just the things which
anyone can see. They tend to indulge in the melancholy labour of
translation, or employ customary, familiar forms, such as the novel or
the play. If only they would write diaries and publish them; compose
imaginary letters; let one inside the house of self, instead of keeping
one wandering in the park!"
These memoirs, then, consist mainly of extracts from my private diary
and my letters home during those memorable days, spent in the Salient
and its vicinity, between the Battle of Messines and the Third Battle of
Ypres. The letters cover a definite period in the history of a great
battalion and in the course of the war. As will speedily be noticed, the
whole period was