Two orderlies took me to the so-called Meldekopf, which was said to give a very good view of the front. We had scarcely left headquarters when a shell fell near us. I was still, apparently, to be “the well-beloved son of Chaos.”
Towards midday the shells came over in an incessant thunder, but my guides cleverly avoided them by the course they took across a country that was marked by numerous little poplar plantations. They worked their way forward through the lovely autumn landscape, with the instinct of the soldier of modern warfare, who even in the heaviest fire can hit on a path that at least offers even chances.
We arrived at a lonely farm, where there were signs of recent shell-bursts. At the yard gate a dead man lay face downwards.
“Settled him!” said one of the sturdy Bavarians.
“Dirty weather!” said the other, and hurried on after a look at the sky.
The Meldekopf lay on the far side of the much-shelled Passchendaele-Westroosebeke road. It was an intelligence clearing-station like the one I had had in my charge at Fresnoy. Situated near a house that had been shot to a heap of rubbish, it was so little protected that the first honest hit would blow it to pieces. Three officers were leading a sociable cave-life there, but they were very much delighted by the prospect of a speedy relief, and gladly told me all I wanted to know about the enemy, and the front, and the approaches to the line. After this I returned to Roulers by way of Roodkruis and Oostnieuwkerke, and made my report to the commanding officer.
As I went through the streets of the town I read the homely names of the numerous little inns that express the snug Flemish life so well. Who would not be drawn by a signboard with the title “Die Zalm” (salmon), “De Reeper” (heron), “Die Nieue Trompette,” “De Drei Königen,” or “Den Olifant”? Does it not echo Teniers and de Coster? At the very outset one is put at one’s ease by the homely speech and the confiding du. May this enchanting country get back its old life again after the frightful wounds of war!
In the evening the town was bombed once more. I went down to the cellar, and found the women huddled in a corner. I turned on my electric torch to comfort the little girl. She was crying for terror in the dark, for a bomb had extinguished the light. Here was another sign of the tenacity with which people cling to their homes. In spite of the violence of their fear, these women embraced the very soil that might at any moment be their grave.
On the morning of the 22nd October I started for Kalve with my troop of four men. It was here that the staff of the regiment was to take over in the course of the morning. There was very heavy shelling on the front, and the flashes gave the early morning mist the appearance of an effervescent bloodred vapour. A house at the entrance of Oostnieuwkerke was hit by a heavy shell, and collapsed with a roar when we were not far from it. Bits of stone rolled about the road. We tried to make a detour, but had to go through the town as we did not know the way by Roodkruis. As I was hurrying by, I asked the way of a N.C.O. who was standing at a cellar entrance. Instead of replying, he dug his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. I had no time to lose, considering the shells that were coming over; so I leapt upon this blunder of military education and extorted the information at the point of my revolver.
This was the first time I ever found anyone in the fighting area who made difficulties, not from cowardice, but just because he wanted to. Though this state of mind naturally grew more general in the last years of the war, yet such an expression of it in the course of operations was extremely unusual, since battle is like an opiate whose immediate effect is to stimulate the nerves, though the subsequent effect is to deaden them. On the other hand, it was when marching out of the line after a “show” that you found clearest indications of crumbling morale.
Matters became more serious round Roodkruis, a small farm at a fork of the road. Limbers were going like mad along the shelled road, infantry wound in file through the fields on either side of it, and a string of wounded dragged themselves along to the rear. A young artilleryman had a long jagged splinter sticking out from his shoulder. We turned off the road to the right to regimental headquarters, which were in a ring of shellfire. Two signallers were laying telephone wire in a field of cabbages near by. A shell went up close beside one of them. We saw him fall, and took it he was finished. However, he picked himself up and with admirable sangfroid continued unrolling his wire. As headquarters were no more than a tiny concrete blockhouse, where there was scarcely room for the commanding officer and his staff, I had to seek quarters elsewhere. With the intelligence, gas, and trench-mortar officers I shared a flimsy wooden hut that was scarcely the ideal of a bombproof shelter.
In the afternoon I went up the line, as a report had come in that the enemy had that morning made an attack on our 5th Company. My way took me over the Meldekopf to “Nordhof,” a farm shelled out of all recognition, beneath whose ruins dwelt the commanding officer of the battalion in reserve. Thence a track that was still just to be discerned led to the C.O.
