Ypres Revisited in 1922

On August 13th, 1917 in one of the most ferocious front line battles, Passchendaele, Royal Fusilier Fred Cearns was killed. Within weeks his brother Percy had written the story of Fred's life. Percy himself was an army dispatch rider and on his days off would meet up with his brother.

This story was published in 2011by High Country member Martin Cearns, in a book entitled
‘The Love of a Brother. From Plaistow to Passchendaele’

In 1922, Percy along with two friends went back to France and Belgium from the 3rd to the 22nd June to revisit the areas which had played such a huge impact on their lives for four years between 1914-1918.

Percy wrote down their adventures and experiences. It makes fascinating reading. I have chosen a small part which describes their experiences at Ypres and the Menin Road.

Our first and lasting impression of the latter was – “what a change”. We left it shattered, battered and war-scarred, a city of crumbling ruins peopled by khaki-clad figures worn and wearied by seemingly purposeless sacrifices and suffering – figures living beneath the ruins and grown callous of bursting shells and bleeding flesh. We found it a new city with the comparatively few heaps of debris being rapidly cleared with new buildings springing phoenix like from the ruins, peopled by thousands of industrious and apparently prosperous Belgians on whom the ravages of the war seemed to have had little personal effect. Outside the station – a new and quite pretentious building - were conveyances of all descriptions, with English speaking proprietors willing to whirl any of the very many visitors round the battlefields in an hour or so. Slowly we walked through the streets. Time was, when even in the dark we all knew our way from place to place among those ruins. Now, we found difficulty in discovering the square, so altered was the aspect of the place.

Our “billet” served its original purpose as cellar of a large house. Where our old friend Doctor Donce had once lived, quite a mansion had been erected. Some of the houses were as yet unoccupied. Many were still being erected with an output of work per man, per diem, which judging from our short observation, would have served as a useful object lesson to the originators of housing schemes in England.

We were somewhat surprised, and a little disappointed, to find both the Cloth Hall and Cathedral being rebuilt. We booked a room in a picturesque wooden shanty opposite the former and then set out for our battlefield ramble. Making our way towards “Dead End” we found restoration much less advanced. It was quite a feat to clamber along where the duck-boards once ran by the side of the Canal, to the Divisional Signal Office. Old dugouts had collapsed across the path, which was also crossed by many little streams tumbling into the green, slimy, smelly, tin-laden, shallow canal. Everywhere grew brambles and rank vegetation. Nevertheless, we managed to pick out the old familiar places – the spot where we used to leave our machines before undertaking that “enjoyable” little duck-board stroll in wet gum boots and heavy overalls laden with ‘beaucoup’ packets of nonsensical D.R.L.S – the place where the Div. D.R’s kept their machines – the site of that precarious plank bridge – and finally the remains of the signal Dug-out: though the Dug-out now had a very crumpled appearance. I believe a S.9. paid it unkind attention just after the 41st DIV. Sigs cleared out. Climbing over the heap of crumbling earth we recalled how often we had waited below for the ‘return dockets’ and packets and cursed the delay because a “solo school” awaited our return, back there in “cushy” Lovie Chateau. The walk to the Menin Gate took us through dumps of old shells, wire and tins and past miserable wooden hovels, each of which however, had a well cultivated patch of land.

The Menin Road – for years the way taken by tens of thousands to days of torment in waterlogged shell swept trenches. What horrors that old road has witnessed, what hellish visions its very name even now can conjure up in the minds of thousands throughout the British Empire.

Passing through the Menin Gate we found the road had been resurfaced thus eradicating those hundreds of roughly filled shell holes – once the bugbear of transport drivers. The road railway at the side was again being used by fussy little engines dragging their loads of curious carriages filled with all sorts and conditions of Belgians, baggage and tourists.

Particularly in the vicinity of Ypres, growing crops marked the progress of cultivation. Further afield the struggle to rest the ground to a condition suitable for agriculture had been more strenuous. Patches of recently furrowed land were interspersed midst acres of war blighted wilderness. Here we saw heaps of war debris and gruesome objects disturbed by the plough and carefully deposited in adjacent ditches – striking evidence of the thoroughness with which the country in front of Ypres had been sprinkled with shells.

We were in no hurry. There was too much to see, every few steps bringing to view fresh places of personal and national interest. White Chateau where D.R. Corporals of the 8th Corps willingly submitted to the indignity of digging a cable dugout - hard work being a welcome change – had been rebuilt on a different site close to the old ruins. Just beyond this, a railway of first class construction crossed the road at the place of portentous name – “Hellfire Corner”.

Then onto Birr Cross Road whence duckboard tracks used to branch in all directions across the marsh of shell-holed bog. Resurrected civilization was now being left behind, new brick houses not yet replacing the roadside wooden shacks thrown together by the peasants immediately after Armistice.

Irradicable signs of war were more plentiful as we walked along the straight rising ground towards Hooge. We visited the cemetery bearing that name, in which thousands of rough wooden crosses testify to the tenacity and bravery of the “Contemptibles”. The shelled-holed and much mined slopes of what had been Sanctuary Wood looked down on that congregation of eternally mute witnesses fallen in its defence. Even now human remains are being found among those wire strewn, weed-grown, splintered tree-stumps.

A mile further along the Menin Road we rested at the foot of a memorial to the “Fallen” of the Gloucester Regiment erected at the place which our map named “Clapham Junction”.

Then, leaving the main road, we made our way along a rough track, northwards to Westhoek. Our purpose was to locate the grave of a brother – one of the “Unknown Warriors”. We passed but one habitation and that a precarious sieve-like shanty, outside of which several healthy- looking youngsters illustrated practically that a battered tank, be it ever so rusty and shattered, forms an admiral playground. What subject matter for sermon or sketch that little scene provided.

At Westhoek cross roads we found a comparatively large farm had been built and smaller houses were in course of erection. Here we had a drink, paying less than for any others we had had during the holiday, except those known as “Freemans” – and listened to a very interesting, if somewhat startling narrative of life in that area since 1918. The first few months for those re-patriated peasants must have been just slavery with a whole lot of horrors thrown in as a noisome tonic. With naïve and almost callous indifference bespeaking long suffering, a girl-woman no more than 20 years of age, related appalling details of discoveries made when digging foundations and levelling ground. We in comfortable “Blighty” have not the slightest conception of the hardships and unspeakable horrors which were the everyday portion of the re-habited inhabitants of these war areas.

Making our way across several fields cultivated by that isolated farm family, we came to what had been a series of German pill-box defences. Recent attempts to remove these by blasting had met with but very scant success. Here lumps of concrete had been displaced, there, huge blocks had been blown off, but the bodies of the boxes – solid feet of concrete with the iron girders and steel rods merely buckled by explosives – had so far defied all attempts at complete destruction. By the sheer obstinacy of their resistance they seemed to have forced the “clearers-up” to turn their attention to less hardy obstacles. Defying destruction when undefended, what hope did our artillery have of blowing up those “hell-boxes” and what chance did the infantry have of taking them by direct assault while unending sheets of bullets, expertly directed, streamed through those low, almost indestructible, concrete walls. Yet they were captured and only those to whom the horror and honour fell can tell how it was accomplished. The cost we all know. We examined a number of shattered pill-boxes and were about to explore the interior of one, but were deterred by stagnant black water and foul stench.

It was of interest to note that invariably these defences were built in positions which enables them to command all slopes in front while each appeared to be covered by at least two others in its rear. The labour entailed in transporting hundreds of tons of concrete and iron through miles of shell-swept marsh-land and the erection of those pill-boxes in exposed positions on veritable bog-land was really a wonderful feat of perseverance and engineering and one which ultimately cost us thousands of lives.

We now went forward and entered the wilderness of Nonne-boschen and Glencorse Woods – woods now in name only. Some slight attempts seem to have been made at clearing up the debris. Here and there were heaps of old equipment , shells, “tin hats”, smashed rifles, wire and tin cans – but there much greater quantities ungathered and now almost hidden by weeds and undergrowth in countless shell-holes. Here too, it would appear that the battlefield scavengers had suddenly decided to transfer their energies to less arduous tasks elsewhere – where no tree stumps hindered operations and where hard work gave quicker results – for things appeared to have altered but little since I visited the spot soon after Armistice.

While prowling among the wreck of trees we heard the first of a series of explosions and saw the resultant cloud of smoke in the distance. We afterwards learned that during a certain period of each day, collected unexploded shells are blown up in batches. Later in the day we happened upon a huge crater used for this purpose and near to which thousands of shells were dumped waiting to be dealt with. We presumed that unloading the shells had proved too dangerous and this summary method had then been adopted for rendering them harmless.

Naturally our poor old friends the “Tanks” were in evidence. Near Glencores Wood were five in an area of not more than 100 square yards. They were a network of crumpled metal – just holes tied together by strips of rusted steel. The position of one tank leaning as it were for support against a tree stump was rather laughable until one wondered what happened to the crew when it stuck and whether they got clear before that shell tore its way through the vitals and blew that ragged hole in the side. We were having a day full of lessons and there were more to come.

Picking our way over the riot of destruction we made towards Polygon Wood seen in the distance as an extensive area of torn and twisted tree stumps. Open country between the woods had been partially cleared, though the innumerable shell-holes yet remained unfilled.
On approach we found that the square mile of Polygon dwarfed in devastation all we had previously seen. Words are idle to adequately describe the desolation amidst which we now wandered. Since leaving Westhoek not a human being had been seen. It was obvious that the great majority of tourists kept to the highways. Thus they would fail to obtain a correct impression of present conditions in the war zone. For convenience repatriated peasants have generally built their new homes close to the main roads. With their patches of cultivated land these homesteads have an air of peace and convey an idea that war results are obliterated, which penetration into districts away from highways and large towns would belie.

Certainly in this travesty of a Wood there was no indication that the ravages of war had been even partially remedied. Of the once closely growing trees nothing remained but shattered, splintered trunks and twisted stumps. Not a single tree had escaped damage and all but a few were just dead wood. To some extent the rank vegetation and weeds veiled the devastation and hid the loops of barbed wire skilfully entwined among the fallen forest giants.

It was hard work scrambling through the undergrowth. Torn clothes and limbs soon made us wary of the hidden wire. Not a square yard of ground but was shell-furrowed, in fact, in this area the shell holes interlocked. Nowhere had we seen such evidence of concentrated artillery fire – from the crater of the fifteen-inch to the shallow hole of the eighteen pounder shell. Weeds and grass hid from the casual eye much of the profusion of war-wrack over which we stumbled. It was the same as elsewhere described only more so. Smashed rusty rifles, tin hats, bayonets, equipment, boots, gas-masks, tunics and trousers, mess tins, bandoleers and bullets, shell cases and shells – they were all there of British and German origin – a mixed and somewhat sad medley of rotting waste. There were human remains too – the poor scattered, shattered bones of “Unknown Warriors”.

The horror and honour of attacking and capturing Polygon Wood fell to the Anzacs. It will always be a source of wonder that men could have lived and fought, won and advanced, and lived to fight again in that awful place of silent horrors eloquent of death and destruction; where flying missiles had filled the air, concrete strongholds spat sheets of bullets, barbed wire tripped unwary feet, where shelled-hole and water-logged ground, strewn with booby-traps, impeded progress against a hidden foe only less brave and tenacious than themselves.

The Anzacs accomplished the impossible. Upon a mound covering what had been a subterranean German hospital had been erected a noble memorial to the fallen Australian soldiers. It is aptly situated and from its height looks down upon a huge cemetery in which lie 5,000 heroes who sacrificed themselves in essaying the capture of that grim, silent, wrecked, piece of blood soaked, once peacefully wooded land.

And they told us at home things were cleared up and we should see no signs of the war.

Satiated with devastation we turned not unwilling steps back towards Ypres, pausing only to obtain a few snapshots.