1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [231]
The meeting ended amicably. If Marshal Joffre still nursed ambitious ideas for renewing the offensive on the western front he did not succeed in communicating them to the British staff and their political masters, and they departed well pleased. The Prime Minister, wishing to have a look at the war for himself, stayed on in France, with Lord Kitchener and the Secretary to the Cabinet, Sir Maurice Hankey. The highlight of their short stay was their visit to Ypres.
General Plumer was not at all happy about it. For one thing, protocol demanded that he should personally escort the visitors, and he could ill spare the time, and for another, Ypres was far too dangerous for sightseers although the Prime Minister did not seem to appreciate the risks. He lingered for a long time at the Menin Gate chatting amiably to some soldiers while Plumer, standing by on tenterhooks, could only express his displeasure by ‘looking daggers’ at his hapless Chief of Staff, General Milne, who had arranged Mr Asquith’s programme. The Prime Minister lingered even longer in the square, shaking his head over the ruins, asking an inordinate number of questions which might as easily have been dealt with in a safer place, cocking his head as he listened for shells and inquired about their calibre. He even insisted on personally measuring the largest of the shell craters. Lord Kitchener was rather more interested in casting a connoisseur’s eye over two small statues which still stood miraculously intact in their niches, on the wrecked facade of the Cloth Hall. He was clearly itching to get hold of them and his interest was so unabashed, his desire so palpable, his dilemma so obvious, that General Milne and Hankey shook with silent mirth. ‘I rather think,’ murmured Milne, ‘those statues are in greater danger now than they’ve ever been from German shells!’
Fortunately for General Plumer’s peace of mind the few shells that came over that morning exploded well away from the centre of the town, but he was heartily thankful when the party drove off with General Milne to tour the heavy gunline and to inspect some reserve trenches at a good safe distance from the line.
Visitors to Ypres were not encouraged. Civilians could not enter the town without the permission of the military, and could not even come into the war zone without a pass from the civil authorities. It had taken Aimé van Nieuwenhove ten wearisome days of form-filling and string-pulling before he managed to secure an official permit that allowed him to spend three nights in Poperinghe and another that enabled him to spend six hours and no more in Ypres. He fervently hoped that it would be long enough to retrieve the family fortunes.
It was more than two months since he had locked his front door for the last time and wondered, ‘What will be left when we return?’ In view of the news that had reached him in Paris he had a fair idea that the answer to that question would be ‘Not much.’
Aimé van Nieuwenhove.
The purpose of my journey was to excavate in the garden of Uncle Pierre Liebaert, to find all the stocks and bonds the old man had buried in August 1914, which he had had to leave behind and which added up to hundreds of thousands of francs.
Although I wished to perform this service for Uncle (also a refugee in Paris and becoming more and more miserable each day at being parted from a large part of his fortune) I also had a strong desire to see for myself the ruins of our home and of our unhappy town in general. On 17 July, three days after leaving Paris, I came into Ypres at seven in the morning, with a one-horse wagon and two workmen I had picked up in Poperinghe. On reaching