GHOULS ON BATTLEFIELDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 December 1919, Page 10

GHOULS ON BATTLEFIELDS.

(Passing through the cavalry barracks at Bruges recently, I turned into the dilapidated shed where the Hun firing parties used to do their foul work—and there I had a shock, writes "Jackstaff" in the Daily Mail. From the centre of a bullet-torn wall a paitch of new brick was staring at me like a bleary, red eye. "Why, what's this!" I asked of our Belgian soldier guide. "They have taken away the wall, m'sieu," he answered. "American officers they come—oh, ever so many of them. Then English people they come too—to see where Captain Fryatt was sholt. They all dig away and dig away the wall for souvenir until they have taken it all and we must put new bricks in." Quite often lately I have come across the souvenir-hunting vandal on- the battlefields and seen Itlie mischief he is doing there. A couple of days after my evperienca at Bruges I went through the famous Kaiser Wilhclm 11. battery at Knocke, close to the Dutch end of the Belgian', coast. This battery, by ithe way, ia kept as a show place—and this is how visitors! are helping to preserve it. From one of the gun-pits I heard the "clink, clink" of an iron bar while an unmistakably English voice directed somebody to "wrench that bit off and chuck it iiiito the car." Looking into the pit I found there three men breaking pieces of gun-fittings away. That they "wanted something to take home with them" was the excuse for this destructiveness, offered by one of them; and quite evidently, in the minds, of all, it was an amply sufficient one. So often have I seen this implement in use there that I am convinced some people must of set purpose provide themselves with a crowbar when they visit the battlefields. One would think the tank "cemeteries" at Zonnebeke, Zillebeke, Hooge, and Houlthulst would be held as almost as sacred as the soldiers'cemeteries, so much do they convey of the intense ruthless fury of war. But in each of these places I have seen the souvenir fiend at work with his big jemmy. And always he was cither a Briton or an American. Even buildings are not immune from these vandals. Ypres appears to ha the only place they are not trying to carry away piecemeal; and that is due probably to its being so well watched. Anyone who climbed Canada's bit of it by the Menin gate after souvenirs would be likely to get them in plenty. They would be impressed all over him in bootmarks, if not, indeed, in something more permanent! French and Belgian visitors do not seem imbued with this spirit of destructiveness. If they want a souvenir they buy one —there are plenty to be lm"d i from the "Chinks" and the Belgian workman. But our memento seeker apparently prefers to obtain his own, and care 3 little how he does that. Luckily guides and drivers of tov/ir.g motors do not take visitors to some of the most interesting spots in the Ypres salient. Perhaps it is too much trouble, or—may be—they may wish to prevent desecration!