1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [152]
Belgium must be held. Therefore Ypres must be held. And that was that.
Miraculously the German bombardment had tailed off. As quiet days succeeded peaceful nights people in Ypres emerged bleary-eyed from cellars and began to creep warily about the streets between crumbling walls and smouldering embers, fetching water, foraging for food. A few shops opened up. They had little to sell, but a few dry-goods and provisions remained and one baker had managed to produce a batch of bread. They queued up to buy it with one ear cocked for the sound of approaching shells, and queued up again with basins and jugs to fetch water from the safe official supply at the Menin Gate. At night when the full moon rose and the ruined towers and gables cast crooked shadows across the pitted streets the citizens of Ypres prudently returned to their cellars for the night. But the nights were strangely quiet.
The weather continued fine and warm. Green shoots began to thrust through the rubble, even blighted trees burst into full luxuriant leaf and there was blossom everywhere in the ravaged gardens. From time to time a stray shell did explode in the town raising a haze of dust that hung for a long time in the sunshine. To the distress of Aimé van Nieuwenhove one of them fell in the Rue de Lille.
Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
Friday 30 April Not many shells during the night, but in the morning small-calibre shells arrive in great quantities. About half past one, while I was dining in the cellars of the post office, Paul Baekelandt came to tell me that a shell must have fallen on my house and that thick smoke was coming out of the windows. I rushed home immediately, but I could not go into the house because the smoke was absolutely suffocating. After a quarter of an hour I was able to ascertain that the shell had fallen on the second floor. The damage was confined to the room where I keep my papers, the roof was seriously damaged and fragments of shell had pierced the floor of the dining room where I usually spend my time. The whole house was filled with a thick layer of dust. I took my courage in both hands and immediately started the work of clearing up.
The Army had taken a hand in clearing debris from some streets to give a clear passage to the wagons that rumbled past all through the night with rations and ammunition and with the tools and sandbags, the wooden stakes, the bales of wire that were needed to construct and consolidate the new line. Every man who could be spared was digging in the moonlight, strengthening the GHQ line, carving out another ahead of it and constructing a switch line that would reach out to loop round Hooge, tracing communication trenches, making new gun positions. On the northern flank of the salient where the line would more or less follow the existing front they were working within sight of the Germans, but the Germans themselves were busy wiring and consolidating and allowed them to work undisturbed.
The Germans had been ominously quiet and, at least for the moment, seemed to have given up the initiative, using their efforts to defend their positions and their guns to repulse the attacks in which the French persisted. But they were feeble attacks and, although British artillery lent supporting fire and the heavy guns promised by Foch had belatedly arrived, they were no match for the German artillery and each new assault was as easily thwarted as those that had gone before.
Over three days of confusion, delay or failure, Sir John French postponed the retirement for a second time,