A STORY IN MUD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19204, 21 June 1924, Page 11

A STORY IN MUD.

WAR’S RAVAGES REMAIN". YPRES A DISTRICT OF MEMORIES. The following article was written following a recent visit to the scene of the World War carnage in Flanders by a correspondent who was “in the lines” during the war. It is a graphic picture of Ypres six year# after the war. Tho mud of Flanders, particularly in the Ypres sector, still tells the story ot the war. On other sectors it has generally been possible to obliterate the scars of tho great bombardments; and even where ruined buildings remain, the soil itself is cultvated, or, at any rate, levelled and healed. But in tho Ypres sector the flat marsh lands remain in many places, much as they were left when the armies dispersed. There are whole tracts of ground, between villages whose names are history, still pitted and churned. There are splintered trees and dumps of wire and scrapiron, and the debris of gun emplacements and dugouts. It is like this round Poolcappello and Passchendacle, Pilkelm, and Booainghe. THE FIRST GAS ATTACK.

I stood on the hummock north of Boesinghe and tried to send my imagination back to an April day of 1915 —that day* when, with a steady wind blowing towards the British lines, the Gormans launched the first gas attack oi the war. The extreme left of our line on the Yser Canal, whore the Canadians joined up with tho French, received tho cloud-attack, before any defence against gas had been dreamed of. There was that choking smell in the oir, and, after, a spasm, men dropped in agony. ‘lt was before the days when the wobbling sound and the dud-like detonation of gas shells, followed by the white, heavy ball of cloud, were a commonplace of trench life. After that first attack the science of anti-gas measures was born. It began, with racks and handkerchiefs and bits of rag dipped in water and tho primitive, bottle-respirator. I came into Ypres at dusk and found any number of hotels where everybody spoke English, and catered for sightseers. As this was not the season for sightseers (who all move in flocks together at a given, signal from the calendar) the hotel people were obsequious, and prepared to overcharge mo with disarming- smiles. But the Muse Clio, whose duty it is to record the deeds of heroes, came down from Parnassus, and led me through the gathering darkness to adventure Near the Menin Gate I found what had once been the site of gun emplacements, but was now a kind of hotel presided over by an exofficer. I went through a yard full of crumbled concrete into a room where they gave me food and wine,, and climbed to my bedroom by a staircase that seemed to be suspended between earth and heaven. It ended weirdly on a dizzy platform on which w'aa a door. Through this I passed 1 to my bedroom. The window looked out across the water at the gashed rampart*. The sky was crowded with stars, and the night was still as though one of those sudden hushes after the fury of the guns had fallen around me. Once more ghosts crowded about mo, and my sleep was troubled and left me unrefreshed. STRANGE CONTRAST. Tho next morning I went out into warm sunshine to see Ypres. It will soon bo a typical show-place. The shops opposite tho Cloth Hall are in the best tradition. Souvenirs are sold, and, as I said before, there are hotels waiting with "open, doors to receive tourists. But it is not all like that. Everywhere you find a violent contrast. While one-half of the town seems to bo tricking itself out to capture _ sensa-tion-hunters, the other half is trying to build something out of the tragedy of shattered houses and streets. All day long there is tho chime of pick and hammer and the rasp of saw and shovel. _ I walked round the ramparts, going slowly by the little groups of crosses and look- • mg out across tho flat lands to Diokebuseh and Kcmmel beyond it, where there are still German dugouts; to St. Eloi, Hollebeke, and Messinos Ridge. I watched the men at work below, and could see tho new Ypres being shaped and chiselled. "For all the ghostly, gasping ruin of the Cloth Hall and cathedral,” said I to my- , self, “something of all this murdered holiness will surely cling to the new red bricks.” What a ground to build upon! In tho spring sunlight the men hummed ■ and whistled, and on the ramparts birds sang above the desolation; and I could have sat there all the long day, drinking good wine as an accompaniment to thoughts too deep for speech.