Page 38 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

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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