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By Root 1833 0

German soldiers had orders of their own and it was not part of the day’s plan to advance beyond St Julien but to attack elsewhere on the shoulders of the salient. And to bombard, bombard, and to go on bombarding to beat the allies into submission and open the road to Ypres. At one point observers, counting fast, reported as many as sixty-eight explosions every minute. By nightfall, the Germans had nibbled further into the line. Ground had been lost and the flanks of some battalions were once again ‘in the air’. A straggle of troops – companies, half companies, odd battalions of disparate commands – moved up or sidestepped to fill the gaps as best they could. With only the vaguest of directions to guide them, marching through shell-fire in the misty dark across strange country to some indeterminate spot on the map, it was hardly surprising that some bodies of men lost their way and appeared at dawn in entirely the wrong place. It was fortunate that the Germans were not alive to the precarious situation in the British line. They made no move to advance, but they made use of the hours of darkness to dig trenches across the ground they had gained, to wire the new frontages and set up machine-gun posts to stop the British in their tracks if they tried to hit back. But the shelling went on and the clouds that hung low across the salient glowed red in the reflection of the fires that raged in Ypres and in the villages around it. They could be seen for miles and from the trenches near St Eloi where the Liverpool Scottish were holding the line, Bryden McKinnell had a grandstand view.

Capt. Β. McKinnell.

These are very trying days and certainly no rest, the news from the left is not very elevating, what little we get, and we find here that ‘no news is bad news’.

The nights are like day, full moon and clear sky; and the days – well, one can only liken them to southern climes – such sunshine, wonderful sunsets and beautiful blue sky all day.

There is a continuous roar of the great battle on the left. Every now and then one of the 17-inch German shells rushes along like an express train, and though this shell is coming towards us from thirteen thousand yards away and is hitting its target in Ypres about three miles away, yet it just sounds as if it was passing along our front, while a cloud of red brick dust flies up and we can feel our dug-outs shake. Every night now we can see a fire in Ypres. So far the Cathedral tower and spires of the Cloth Hall are still standing.

Watching the flames lick into the sky McKinnell found it difficult to believe that barely three weeks ago he disturbed nesting jackdaws by climbing that very tower for a tourist’s view of the countryside around. Where were the jackdaws now? What had happened to Marie the barmaid? As the air above their heads trembled in the slipstream of shells thundering towards Ypres, it was hard not to dwell on another question. When would their turn come?

Trpr. G. C. Chaplin, 1st Northants, Yeomanry.

That night another bloke and I were left with the horses not far outside Ypres, and in the distance I could see a church standing out quite clearly. About 1 a.m. the Germans started to shell the area and some shells were incendiaries. One landed in the church porch and started a blaze and in minutes the fire was roaring down the whole length of the place. I could hear the sound of the wood cracking and the glass of the windows smashing in the intense heat. Then the fire reached the tower and we waited to see what would happen next. It was fearful, a terrible thing to see. When the timbers burnt through the spire slid into the tower in showers of sparks and across the fields we could hear the clanging of the church bell as it went down with it. Moments later the whole place was a raging furnace.

The fires could not be doused or even contained, for there was no water to be had. The inhabitants who still remained in Ypres were cowering in cellars hoping and praying that their houses would not catch fire or collapse in a pile of rubble that would block their escape. But Father Delaere