IN YPRES SECTOR

Hokitika Guardian, 7 August 1928, Page 2

IN YPRES SECTOR

■KMOTIOXS OF RKTTTSH PILGRIMS Australian Press Assn.—United Service LONDON. Aug. 5. Ypres has become the headquarters of thousands of men trying to keep an emotional appointment with the past. Men who had not seen the Ypres sector since the war, gazing there to-day, were dazed to stupefaction, and .some to the verge ol tears, when they saw it (says the Sunday Express correspondent). Nature has smoothed out man’s insanity. The ground which was fallowed for foui years, and was ploughed by the guns of Europe, is now hearing the richest crops in its history. Many ex-soldiers stood on the site of the old dugouts and wondered whether it was all a

dream. They were comparing notes when sitting in the cafes in the Grand Place, and telling how they went to seek for their old headquarters, hut found shops selling camisoles and silk nighties and even cheap little vulgar shops which had sprung up. were selling souvenirs of the Great AAar. Hellfire Corner has become a tidy little farm with chickens running about. The pilgrims, including over a thousand mothers, widows and fiancees of soldiers headed by Lady Haig, were bewildered by the hew Ypres town. Hill Sixty is little changed. The past is easily recallable. Vitny Ridge, thanks to the Canadian Government, is exactly as it was. Thicpval is "still a place of skeleton trees. Occasionally muddy buttons and badges are prodded up, but tho pilgrims seeking memories are finding them until their hearts ache, lying in white rows in the cemeteries, like battalions on parade in lovely places of green turf and flowers. Though these bring heart aches, there is peace and beauty there locked away from tho world’s sorrows in earth which is forever England.