WINTER IN FLANDERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 184, 24 April 1918, Page 5

WINTER IN FLANDERS

GREY FROST-BOUND WASTE ON BARREN

BATTLEFIELD

(By Captain H. B. C. Pollard.)

[Published by authority of the War Office,, by favour of the Eoyal Colonial Institute.j

AVhen- the still breath of winter sets in fecross'.the battle-scarred Flanders lowlands, the landscape assume a'more .than ordinarily melancholy appearance. In the cold drizzle of rains without end distance and detail are alike blurred, mist .veiled and hidden in grey 6emitones of ■fog. Men. and horses, splashed wit'h mud from head to foot, plot wearily through the churned clay that covers road and field alike. AVitli tho frost the appearanco of everything changes. The mud ridges freeze into hard sawcrested lines with strips, of blue-whito ice in the wheelruts... Patches of broken ico and frozen clay show whero a sheet of water has been in the trdftic way, churned up by passing; transport in the night. . Men and animals alike walk tentatively,' as if unused to this queer bolid ground after their apprenticeship to, years of yielding mud. Hound the trenches and in No Man's land' each shell crater contains its sheet of ice, masking'tho deep and icy water that lies beneath. If snow falls these craters heconio deadly traps for patrol parties, for unsuspecting n man may step upon them in tho dark. There'may be ten or'fourteen feet of water in some of tlieni, and there is little hope for escape .'for an equipment-burdened man. ■ Frost-rinie glistens upon barbed wire fend picket posts, powders the hard clods of earth round tho craters, and shines white upon the terrible debris of. the front line. There is a mercilessness about the winter air that seems' to throw out in high relief all the monstrous untidiness of war. A ruined village which may seem almost picturesque in spring or summer shows all its unredeemed misery upon a. winter morning. Tho ►.harp edges of the shell-pounded bricks, the splintered laths and beams, all seem to bo doubly pointed with the bitter cold. The blackoned Tomnants of trees, ' tho withered and lifeless shrubs that mark what was once a garden, seem gatint and utterly lifeless'. Torn rags, remnants of household gear, empty bully-beef tinsall tho empty worthless wreckage of desolation seems cast up I>y tho frost to catch tho eye, challenging and mocking tho intelligence of mankind, symbolic of the blind disasters that war brings.

In the sharp air rifle and machine-gun fire sound curiously staccato, almost metallic. Queer memories flit across the mind, vague echoes of bright, freezing rlays liko this at home when the frost was too haTd for hunting arid one potter, ed about the edges of the covert to pick up a rabbit or two, a pigeon, or a stray pheasant. Thus musing, the fretful riile fire reminds one of tho guns at a pheasant shoot, till the drone of a heavy shell recalls one to tho present. Behind the* German line a fountain of 6inoko and earth spout 3 skyward, and one seems to hear the tardy sound of the explosion sooner and clearer because the air is -sharp. . '. Down a communication trench shufflo two soldiers supporting a third. Theiv grotesque goatskius have been wet and have frozen hard, leaving tho hair in a curious staring pattern showing bare patches. Their faces aro red and flushed with the cold, and their breath comes in steaming puffs condensing in tho cold air. The man they are helm'ng along th<v trench looks collapsed and a picture of misery. • "Wiiat is it—wounded man?' "No, sir—he was out on listening post last- night and got trench feet." Painfully the man hobbles on. He is not wounded, yet "trench feet" are moro exquisitely painful than many wounds. Men pass and yepass ; grotesque figures wrapped up iu goatskins, layers of puttees, and even old sandbags. Their steel helmets are perched on top of Balaclava helmets of knitted wool, their hands aro (shapeless in hedging gloves provided for tho handling of barbed wire. All are full of life and vigour and fun. They stamp their feet to keep warm, beat their arms about, and whistle, keeping up a continual /low of chaff and cheerful witticism. Sonic prefer the cold to tho mud, others vote for the mud regime;- but, wet or dry, summer heat or freezing cold, it makes no difference to their, cheery, unfailing optimism. Yonder are the German trenches down in tho frozen, water-logged valley. Their occupants never ring now, nnd are not unwilling to be taken prisoner by the British troops who raid their trenches nightly. For tho .German soldiers know that they nre playing a losing- game. Only tho winning eido could keep cheerful in that frost-bound desolation.