ill be forever haunted by the spirit of
those men of ours who passed through its gates to fight in the fields
beyond or to fall within its ramparts.

I went through Ypres so many times in early days and late days of the
war that I think I could find my way about it blindfold, even now. I saw
it first in March of 1915, before the battle when the Germans first
used poison-gas and bombarded its choking people, and French and British
soldiers, until the city fell into a chaos of masonry. On that first
visit I found it scarred by shell--fire, and its great Cloth Hall was
roofless and licked out by the flame of burning timbers, but most of the
buildings were still standing and the shops were busy with customers
in khaki, and in the Grande Place were many small booths served by the
women and girls who sold picture post-cards and Flemish lace and fancy
cakes and soap to British soldiers sauntering about without a thought of
what might happen here in this city, so close to the enemy's lines, so
close to his guns. I had tea in a bun-shop, crowded with young officers,
who were served by two Flemish girls, buxom, smiling, glad of all the
English money they were making.

A few weeks later the devil came to Ypres. The first sign of his work
was when a mass of French soldiers and colored troops, and English,
Irish, Scottish, and Canadian soldiers came staggering through the Lille
and Menin gates with panic in their look, and some foul spell upon them.
They were gasping for breath, vomiting, falling into unconsciousness,
and, as they lay, their lungs were struggling desperately against some
stifling thing. A whitish cloud crept up to the gates of Ypres, with a
sweet smell of violets, and women and girls smelled it and then gasped
and lurched as they ran and fell. It was after that when shells came in
hurricane flights over Ypres, smashing the houses and setting them
on fire, until they toppled and fell inside themselves. Hundreds of
civilians hid in their cellars, and many were buried there. Others
crawled into a big drain-pipe--there were wounded women and children
among them, and a young French interpreter, the Baron de Rosen, who
tried to help them--and they stayed there three days and nights, in
their vomit and excrement and blood, until the bombardment ceased. Ypres
was a city of ruin, with a red fire in its heart where the Cloth Hall
and cathedral smoldered below their broken arches and high ribs of
masonry that had been their b