We struggled along
until noon with our routine work, and having completed it Captain
Rankin and I left for Ypres. A soldier had been transferred to us, and
as we did not need him we decided to register a formal protest and see
if he could not be kept with his present unit. Our road lay through
Dickiebush and we made good time, again reaching Ypres about two
o'clock.
It was quite evident to me as I retraversed the streets of Ypres that
it had been heavily shelled since I had been there a few days before.
Many more houses had been smashed, and unmended shell holes were seen
in the roads. As we crossed the Grande Place there was scarcely a
soldier visible. The Cloth Hall, which the Captain had not seen
before, showed further evidences of shell fire. After viewing the
ruins we drove to the little restaurant kept by the pretty milliners,
only to find that the place had completely disappeared--literally
blown to atoms. Later on we found that a fifteen-inch shell had landed
in the building next door and both houses had simultaneously vanished.
A well known officer, Captain Trumbull Warren of the 48th Highlanders,
Toronto, coming out of a store on the opposite side of the square had
been killed by a flying fragment of the same shell.
We wondered whether the milliners had escaped, and somewhat depressed,
drove along in search of another restaurant.
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