THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES[1]
GREY field of Flanders, grim old battle-plain,
What armies held the iron line round Ypres in the rain,
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the Lys river?
Merry men of England,
Men of the green shires,
From the winding waters,
The elm-trees and the spires,
And the lone village dreaming in the downland yonder.
Half a million Huns broke over them in thunder,
Roaring seas of Huns swept on and sunk again,
Where fought the men of England round Ypres in the rain,
On the grim plain of Flanders, whose earth is fed with slaughter.
North-country fighting men from the mine and the loom,
Highlander and lowlander stood up to death and doom,
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the Lys river.
London men and Irish,
Indian men and French,
Charging with the bayonet,
Firing in the trench,
Fought in that furious fight, shoulder to shoulder.
- ↑ In the first Battle of Ypres, which was fought in October—November, 1914, a thin line of British, supported on each wing by small bodies of French, stopped the push of an immense German army on Calais. The allusion in the latter part of the poem is not to "the angels of Mons," but to a story received from a very competent witness. On three occasions the Germans broke through the line, then paused and retired, for no apparent reason. On each of these occasions prisoners, when asked the cause of their retirement, replied: "We saw your enormous Reserves." We had no Reserves. This story was incidentally confirmed by the remark of another officer on the curious conduct of the Germans in violently shelling certain empty fields behind our lines.
