The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1927. A MILLION CASUALTIES.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 September 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1927. A MILLION CASUALTIES.

YrnKS, yclept Wipers by the British i j Tommy, lias been the scene of anotiier .memorable gatheri'ng, The occasion j was the unveiling of the Meiiin Gate Memorial. “An Old Stager” win writes J always most interestingly of passing || events in Great Britain, mainly poliJ tical, was himself ,a defender of Ypres il during the long defence of the war J period, an<l he referred to the Alenin 1 Gate Memorial in the Lyttelton Times J of Saturday last. Though unable to il be presnt at the ceremony in person, J he was able to visualise the scene. He j* wrote in his graphic way: “There will J be a brave gathering for the ceremony, and my firm faith is that it will inJ elude near on a million friendly giiosts. J The salient was sooner or later the J destination of most men who served . through the war in the fighting ranks ■I of Britain. First and last two or three million khaki warriors fought at 'l Ypres. During the four long years that • wo held it against overwhelming, odds, not for any crucial military ndvan- ■ tage hut als a. point of sentimental “I honour, Wipers claimed almost a milj lion British casualties. That comic d| name became a house-hold word with 7 the khaki legions. Its mention conjured visions of a crumbling charnel house of cellars under ruined ruins, the thunder of relentless batteries, a network of trenches and saps, acres of rusty wire and the stench of dead men and horses. Day by day the Germans methodically and furiously shelled it. Night by night the pale Verov lights, like beautiful flowers on a slender curving stem, revealed its ghastly wreckage ever sinking nearer the ground. And the stream of casualties, with blood-soaked bandages, never ceased. Plainer and his Second Army held the ancient pearl secure within their iron grasp, but it was ground to dust within their heroic grasp. And the Afonin Gate was the grim portal of the demolished city leading straight

to the "Wipers battlefields beyond. It "ns a name of familiar but sinister omen to every soldier in the British Army. Those who marched through the Men in Gate marched to no military picnic. Every man of them' knew the unceasing obligato of the guns to the deadliest living drama ever staged in this world filled the near horizons. Every man Knew, in the great words of the Shavian Caesar, he must “take his life into his hand and hurl it in the face of death.” The Men in Gate was the touchstone of fate; the jump-ing-off place of inscrutable destiny. And, since the German gunners had it ranged to the last inch, it was about the unhen,lthiest spot in all Wipers. The soldier who wheeled with his platoon from behind the partial shelter of the ramparts towards the Men in Gate braced himself to face the gauntlet hazard. There were not many hours of any days, or nights, when the German batteries did not strafe it. Once through, and out upon the long, lean Men in Hoad, beyond, however adventurously dubious the final issue, he breathed more freely. The chanciest bottleneck on the Western Front was safely past. The men in the tin hats shook themselves into their packs and smartened up their step. God knew what lay right ahead, hut the Menin Gate lay behind. There were traffic controls stationed at that Gate. Two lone sentries, with a little dug-out in the end of the ramparts, whose duty it "as to warn those who would hazard the exit from Ypres. When the Ger-

man barrage clamped down on it, they held the advancing troops up till there ,was better weather. It was not an enviable or a merry duty, and in the faces of those stoical sentries one read their knowledge of the certainty of their fate. It was as inevitable as the civilian’s morning milk. So I am very sure that, when the brazen bugles sound the Keveille and wind the Last Post round the old Men in Gate there will he marshalled an invisible host. All those gallant kindly sportsmen, whom we knew as good comrades of the

had times, and jolly pals of the go d ones, will be there. Their little neat white graves, amidst blossoming French and Belgian flowers, still “hold the fort.” Little they dreamed of a day when a splendid memorial would mark the spot whore the Alenin Gate gave access to the battered desolation of the AY i pers’ front-line trenches, amidst the shell-holed swamps and pestilent wilderness of No Alan’s Land. Though they were great naive sentimentalists, they were not a bit. theatrical. Their simple heroism was not spectacular. Theirs was the humdrum epic—weary, lousy, hungry, fed up and homesick—of just sticking it. Sticking it day and night, in fair weather and foul, under a never-ceas-ing hammering of shell and machinegun fiie. They groused, but they never whined. They hated it. but they made tbe best of it. And they never lost their sporting humour through it all. Their home was some noisome rat-ridden cellar that- would make the worst slum in the unlidicst city in Europe look like a sanatorium or a nursing home. But they brae' ■' about its “cushiuess.” Huddled they were, in slimy shell-holes in the interludes of battles that shaped the world’s history.” And so was history made. It is an epic story, the story of Ypres, where the British knew not defeat nor retreat. They just hung on there, holding the fort which helped to save the day and win the war. And tbe price! A million casualties! Looking back over that long defence we. can but marvel at tbe stamina and stoicism of tbe men who fought- on. Going daily io face almost certain death that a strategical point might it held. It was by deeds such ms these that the war was won. How well and worthily was tile Alenin Gate Memorial wan and how well it deserves to be honored.