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MRS LE BLOND’S WAR

          clear that Lizzie was deeply affected by what she saw on that
          excursion, and her account in her memoirs is perhaps the most
          powerful  piece  of  writing  she  ever  produced.  At  Ypres,  not  a
          single human being was to be found. All was in ruins – by the
          medieval Cloth Hall, a ‘shapeless mass’, her companion shared
          some of his own memories of the conflict, and from the Menin
          Gate, the crossing point through which hundreds of thousands
          of allied troops had passed on their way to the Front, they could
          see the ramparts and the dug-outs on the plain beyond. A couple
          of miles on, past Hellfire Corner, they reached Hooge, the site of
          fierce  fighting  over  four  years,  now  nothing  but  a  name,  the
          ground  shell-torn,  honeycombed  with  holes  full  of  stagnant
          water. Further on, they came to an area which had not yet been
          cleared. Here, the ground:


              ‘was  churned  to  an  incredible  extent.  Fragments  of  cloth,
              scraps  of  metal,  ghastly  remains,  the  nature  of  which  one
              hardly dared to guess at, were pressed and rolled into what
              seemed a solid mass of congealed mud.’

              Near Messines they turned back, afraid of getting lost in the
          desolate  and  depopulated  wasteland,  and  turned  towards  the
          village of Neuve Eglise. Here too were ruins, and the shattered
          church, standing on a slight rise, ‘the blue sky showing through
          its slender arches, was the only beautiful war ruin’ which she saw
          during her entire trip. Returning to Poperinghe at the end of that
          first afternoon’s tour of the battlefields, Lizzie reflected on the
          impact on her:

              ‘Not till one has stood beside those tortured trenches, and
              seen how the salient runs out under observation from a half-
              circle of hills like the edge of a saucer, can one realize what
              flesh and blood, clothing an heroic spirit, has endured. And
              even then one cannot imagine more than a mere fraction of
              what it must have been when the hell of conflict was at its
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