At Ypres with Best-Dunkley | Page 9

to be to me a very common
sight during those memorable "Wipers days"--an air fight. I had not
been in the little wooden hut many minutes before Roake called me out
to watch a scrap between British and German aeroplanes over the
Salient. We got out our field-glasses and, in the cool of a summer's
evening, when any ordinary individual in "Blighty" would be relaxing
from the labours of the day in cricket or in tennis, we surveyed with
interest the contests between the chivalrous heroes of the air far above.
It was then that I first saw a "blazing trail across the evening sky of
Flanders." There were many such in the summer of 1917, though the
brilliant young airman of whose death that glowing eulogy had been
written now lay sleeping beneath a little wooden cross in the grave in
which the Germans, paying homage to true chivalry, had laid him at
Annoeullin. Who could watch those little specks rising and falling, and
falling to rise no more, up there in the bright blue sky without a thrill of
admiration for these "New Elizabethans" of England and Germany?
It was during tea that I realized that I was really at the war. The guns
began to boom and the hut shook with the continual vibration. And
then the band of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers struck up some jolly
tunes in the field. War and music going hand in hand, it was difficult to
know whether one ought to feel jolly or sad. I think I may safely say
that we felt as jolly and gay as could be; I know that the romantic
aspect was the one which appealed to me most. This was the real thing,
none of your home-service games.
The bombardment became more intense as the evening progressed.
After dark the Transport moved off to carry rations up to the men in the
line. If it is not superfluous to do so, I would wish to pay here the
warmest possible tribute to those gallant Transport men who used to
"carry rations on the road from Pop to Ypres." It was no picnic. The
Boche knew quite well the time that vast and apparently never ending
chain of traffic would be wending its nightly way from Poperinghe to
Ypres. He shelled the great high road systematically every night. Every
night some of those gallant men would go never to return. It seemed

marvellous that so many could escape the destruction which was hurled
at them; but war is full of wonders.
My diary of that night reads as follows:
"As it began to get dark the bombardment became louder and louder
and the flashes more vivid. Shells were falling at Vlamertinghe, half
way between Poperinghe and Ypres, exploding with a great sound.
They were falling here yesterday!
"At about 10.30 p.m. we saw the Transport set off along the road,
taking rations and supplies up to Ypres.... Humfrey went with them. (I
would have gone up with him, but the Adjutant of the 2/5th had sent a
message by the signals saying that I could sleep at the Transport Lines
and report the following morning.) Red Cross motors were also coming
back from Ypres with wounded. Meanwhile the moon--a full
moon--steadily rose above the Front, amid the flashes between Ypres
and Messines, the bombardment sounding like thunder. It was a fine
scene. If only there had been an artist there to paint it! A farm on the
Switch Road (a new road for traffic built by the British Army) some
way off got on fire. I hear that the King's, in our Brigade, are going
over the top on a raid to-night. Our great offensive here has not yet
opened, but it will come off before very long....
"To bed 11.30, the guns booming like continuous thunder. I was
awakened in the night by shells whizzing past the hut where I was
sleeping."
So I was, at last, introduced to that strangest of all music--the screech
of a shell: Whoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-UMP!

CHAPTER II
THE PRISON
It has already been observed that the 55th (West Lancashire) Division,

after a hot time on the Somme, particularly at Guillemont and Ginchy,
had come up the Salient in October, 1916. So when I joined the
Division it was in the 8th Corps, commanded by Sir Aylmer
Hunter-Weston ("Hunter-Bunter," as I remember Best-Dunkley calling
him), in Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. The 55th Division was
responsible for the sector between Wieltje and the south of Railway
Wood.
The 55th Division was commanded by Major-General Jeudwine, of
whom it has been said: "No General ever was more devoted to his
Division: no Division ever was more devoted to its General."[2] The
three infantry brigades in the Division were the 164th Brigade
(Brigadier-General Stockwell),