DESPATCH RIDING

Evening Star, Issue 15907, 13 September 1915, Page 6

DESPATCH RIDING

By the side of a street in the ruins of Ypres was one of those young men who wear armlets of blue and white, who are always sitting on motor cycles, and who streak across the laid like comets. They are "signals " This one was a Cambridge man, who presented himself early in the war with hie. machine, and has been conveying messages ever since. He "was in the great retreat, and had to push along in the direction from which others were coming fast, and he was mixed up in the great advance. But his really "hairr time" (to use hi.'; own phrase) was in the eecond battle of Ypres. Ho did not know the way through the town to Hooge and beyond, and there were shells expkding everywhere, and the Iscises were failing about him. People were running anywhere, and the things Ivintr about in the streets wore not pretty. Tie found his man at last in a dug-crat, and for two hours they waited for the place to go. The signal Vires had already gone; then ihe ammunition went, and then everybody went, accompanied by a general storm of shell, and the men "did m ' cnr-i what happened, for they were both fatigued and choked with. gas. In all the prolonged anxious time during- that HnHle onlv one desnatch rider of this section was lost, and he was found, poor fellow, beside his machine, unwounded, but suffocated. He had ridden through the poison till he had no more breath, and then had slipped off and died. What had made a terrible impression en the miind of this despatch rider was the collapse and the burning of the ancient •city of Ypres, and the flight of the civilians. There was a night when the whole city was in flames, the walls were roaring as they fell, and the shells xreie blowing out the flaming heart of the place. The roads out of it were, thronged with fugitives, their torments lighted by the flames of the hel! from which they were trying to escape. There were screams and horrible cries, lost children running and shouting in fear, and soldiers dropping spent beneath the frantic hooves q£ cattU.'