YPRES THEN AND NOW.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3149, 25 December 1922, Page 8

YPRES THEN AND NOW.

( IJv T. .1. IVml.ierlon). i.asl week I stood on Hill (52, and i In., scene from thai war-scarred peak one evening in March, 15)18 was vividly recalled. 11 was just that time when men waited with a touch of apprehension for the evils that the night must briny. The sun. blood-rod, was going down over the vast expanse of desolation. Only a lew columns of smoke showed up a mile or two to the oast. where the men of the outpost line were longing to stretch their cold and cramped limbs again under cover of the darkness.

.Now and again a moan from the sky told that the long-range guns were making the railheads and towns in the rear less pleasant oven than the wilderness of mud. The jagged skeletons of Ypros showed up clear against the sky. Zillebeko Lake was a natch of gold. A few mounds of bricks showed where tho village had stood. Just down below was the quagmire which once was Sanctuary Wood. Long, snake-like lines of yellow figures wound their way over tho endless duck-boards. There is just one ruin visible on this bright autumn morning—the Cloth Hall ill Ypres. The town itself and the suburbs, with their hundreds of red roofs, make a garish patch on the edge of tho picture. Etang do Zilkbeke, the only lent lire of the landscape that even war could not change, sparglcs in the sunlight. From Helllire Corner to the Men in Road and eastward along Observatory Ridge the new village has blazed its way. Scattered everywhere among the growing crops are the farmsteads whose names are written in history—Moated (Jrange, Dormy House, Yeomanry Post. Valley Cottages. Leinster Farm: names lbe significance of which the peaceful owners will never know . Everywhere along the network of roads which centres on the city the red brick, red-tiled houses have risen up like a ; crop of giant poppies amid the green.

Only (lie .shattered trees where once the wealth of forest stood tell their eloquent tale of the blasting breath of war.