PILGRIMAGE TO YPRES SALIENT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 109, 9 May 1923, Page 6

PILGRIMAGE TO YPRES SALIENT

995 POOR PEOPLE VISIT THE

GRAVES

(HtOJl ODR OWN COItMSPONBBNT.)

LONDON, 28th March. Nearly a thousand relatives of the men who fell in the Ypres salient took part in a pilgrimage to the war graves during last week-end. Through the combined activities of "Too H" and the St. Barnabas Hostels, the expedition was rendered possible. A great deal of work has gone to its organisation during the past few weeks. Major lan Hay Beith, chairman of the joint committee of the two institutions, had made excellent arrangements which were well supervised by Major B. S. Browne, and faithfully carried out by the Rev. M. Mullineux, M.0., and his voluntary staff of workers at the hostels.

The pilgrims left Victoria Station on the Saturday night at 11 o'clock, travelling in two special trains to Dover, where in the early hours of Sunday morning they embarked in a special steamer for Calais, breakfast being served at 6 a.m. The party was accompanied by the band of the Eoyal Artillery, the choir of All .Hallows-by-the-Tower, and the Lord Mayor's Own (City of London) Scout Troop, when it left for the Ypres salient.

. Abeele was chosen for their first stopping place, because it is the nearest point to the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, the biggest and most complete of the many cemeteries in the war area. There are about ten thousand, graves in Lijssenthoek Cemetery, and it wa3 decided to hold there the principal ceremony of the day. The dead who lie there are of all nationalities. The great majority, of course, are British, but there is a space occupied by the graves of French soldiers. Then there are a few American dead, a number of Germans even, and, finally, one Chinaman, buried in a corner apart, on alien soil, and among strangers.

The pilgrims went from Abeele by mo-tor-cars, and left their conveyances a little distance away to form into a kind of ragged procession. Many of the women were very much affected, and the sight of this host of mourners slowly approaching the gate of the cemetery was most pathetic. Very slowly they walked up the broad path in the middle of the cemetery to the Stone of Remembrance, the impressive and simple memorial,, which was to form an. altar for the service, and as they moved all began to sing the words of the hymn, "For all the Sainte." Gradually they all filed into the cemetery and grouped themselves around the Stone of Remembrance. On its face is inscribed, "Their name liveth for evermore." and the service in the graveyard was eloquent testimony of the truth of the words. The Stone of Remembrance served as an altar, on which even the sacred vessels had been made of relics of the war. It was covered with flowers, and here, under a blue sky, Holy Communion was celebrated in the midst of the pilgrim thousand. Only a few were allowed to communicate. Of these one was a woman who looked close on 80. The Burgomasters of Ypres and Poperinghe were present, and a few Belgians joined the mourners. There were there also all of those English gardeners who care for the cemetery, so that it is to-day one of the most decent and beautiful of all the cemeteries in Flanders.

After the Sacrament there was another prayer and a short silence. Then a blare of sound broke out as trumpeters of the Eoyal Horae Artillery played the "Last Post" in honour of the dead. This was followed by the "Reveille," and so the service ended not on a note of despair, but on one of hope. At its conclusion the pilgrims split up into parties and were taken by motorcar to other cemeteries in the neighbourhood of Ypres. At each of these similar scenes on a smaller scale took place, except that there was no official ceremony. The arrangements were so comprehensive and so excellently carried out that, within the space of half a day, every member of this vast band of pilgrims had paid a personal visit to the grave that must have seemed for so long to exist merely in the imagination. By 5 o'clock the visitors had all been brought together again. They reassembled in the great square at Ypres immediately in front of the ruined Cloth Hall. Here for the first time they were able to realise something of the immensity of the war in which those others had fought. The Scouts accompanying the party entertained the pilgrims with their Scout songs, and then before the departure of the train a second service at which "Abide With Me" was sung, was held in the station square. All went smoothly on the return journey, and the pilgrims arrived back in London by 8 o'clock on Monday morning. All those who paid this brief visit to the graves of their sons, brothers, or husbands were people who were unable to pay their own passage.. Many of them were very old, and the strain of prolonged travelling must have been very great, but the triumph of organisation by the Rev. M. Mullineux and his taff was such that no untoward incident occurred to mar the pilgrimage. Fortunately, this Palm Sunday was a warm spring day which had come as a surprise in the <»idrt jrf tfag juMusttlai Jfecb HW.thjsi 4