1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [160]
The town was being evacuated section by section and for three consecutive days the Friends Ambulance Unit ran a shuttle service to transport the old and the sick, while the able-bodied made their way on foot to Poperinghe where trains were waiting to convey them far from Ypres. Ahead of them lay a journey of many days, for they were to be sent well away from the danger zone, away from Belgium itself, deep into France to be billeted on strangers and to manage as best they could. It was a bleak prospect. More fortunate citizens who had relatives in France or who, like Aimé van Nieuwenhove, were people of substance, could make private arrangements, but it was small consolation. Everyone had to go.
Aimé van Nieuwenhove made a last tour of his beautiful, battered house. During the night the glass of the drawing-room windows had been shattered by an explosion. He removed two leaves from his dining table to nail across the gaps but without much hope that they would prevent any determined person from getting in. He went upstairs, looked into the bedrooms and locked the doors. Last of all he went to the kitchen where his children’s three canaries chirped happily in the morning sun, unhooked the cages, carried them one by one to the garden and opened the doors. The canaries, as reluctant as van Nieuwenhove himself to quit familiar surroundings
were in no hurry to fly off. He watched them for a few minutes, sick at heart, and then he turned away.
Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
Wednesday 5 May The members of the committee met at my place for departure. During the whole period of the bombardment I have seldom seen my colleagues so well-groomed as they were today. At last, the cars having arrived, everybody got in and I double-locked my front door. What a lovely day it was. I hadn’t seen the outskirts of the town for six months now. I sat up in front with the driver.
I cast a last look at the Grand’ Place and the Place Vanden-peereboom and finally on the rue Elverdinghe. The shells escorted us out of town as if to pay us their farewell compliments. It was extraordinary how frightened we felt at these explosions, just as we were leaving the places where so many other shells had fallen without much bothering us.
Our first stop was in front of the hospital on the Vlamer-tinghe road. I got out of the car and looked towards the derelict railway station. I could still see the shells exploding on the town, then, as I got back into the car, I bade a sad, tearful farewell to our dear little city.
The Committee were almost the last to go but, despite the official order, a few obstinate souls remained although the bombardment had started up again only a little less furiously than before. Now that the town officials had departed Father Delaere had taken charge.
Father Delaere.
6 May I have got permission from the English Commandant to stay in the town with ten men who are working under my orders, burying the dead, interring the horses, putting out fires and patrolling the streets to prevent pillaging. We are virtually alone.
The weather has turned rainy. I wish to heaven that it was only raining rain but, alas, shrapnel shells are also raining down, three or four every minute. There are no more than twenty of us left in the town. Ypres is well and truly dead! There is a terrible emptiness but I do not let it depress me. I will not submit to this enforced evacuation without trying every possible means to resist it. I have decided to stay to the end – dead or alive. God have pity on me!
7 May The fire that reduced the church of St Nicolas to cinders spread to the boys’ school next door and it too fell prey to the flames. In the rue Carton many houses went on fire, among them Judge Tyberhien’s with all his treasured antiques. My men, who had gone out to look for bodies, triumphantly brought back a poor old man of eighty-six whom they’d found in an abandoned house where he would certainly have died of