Lijssenthoek was the last of the cemeteries on Belgian soil _The King's Pilgrimage

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THE KING'S

PILGRIMAGE

PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK

WILL, BY HIS MAJESTY'S DESIRE, BE

DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE PHILANTHROPIC

ORGANIZATIONS WHICH FOR SOME

TIME HAVE BEEN ASSISTING RELATIVES

TO VISIT THE CEMETERIES ABROAD

"THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE"

[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN

"_Standing beneath this cross of sacrifice and facing the great stone of

remembrance_"]

The King's Pilgrimage

London:

Hodder and Stoughton, Limited

1922

_The Imperial War Graves Commission has to acknowledge the permission of

the following for the publication of the photographs which are contained

in this book: Central News Agency, Graphic Photo Union, "Daily Mail,"

Press Photographic Agency, "The Times," Topical Press Agency, Lt.-Col. H.

Ellissen, Mr. F. C. See, Mr. A. H. W. Brown_

PRINTED IN PHOTOGRAVURE

THE SUN ENGRAVING CO., LTD.

LONDON AND WATFORD

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

May 1922.

I am interested to hear of the proposed publication of the record of my

pilgrimage to the War Graves.

It grieves me to think how many relatives are prevented from visiting the

graves of their dear ones through lack of means. During my recent visit to

the Cemeteries in France and Belgium, I was glad to learn that various

organisations are endeavouring to meet this difficulty by raising funds

which I trust will be substantially assisted by the sale of the book.

George R. I.

The King's Pilgrimage

Our King went forth on pilgrimage

His prayer and vows to pay

To them that saved our Heritage

And cast their own away.

And there was little show of pride,

Or prows of belted steel,

For the clean-swept oceans every side

Lay free to every keel.

And the first land he found, it was shoal and banky ground

Where the broader seas begin,

And a pale tide grieving at the broken harbour mouth

Where they worked the Death Ships in:

And there was neither gull on the wing,

Nor wave that could not tell

Of the bodies that were buckled in the lifebuoy's ring

That slid from swell to swell.

(_All that they had they gave--they gave; and they shall not return,

For these are those that have no grave where any heart may mourn._)

And the next land he found, it was low and hollow ground

Where once the cities stood,

But the man-high thistle had been master of it all,

Or the bulrush by the flood;

And there was neither blade of grass

Or lone star in the sky,

But shook to see some spirit pass

And took its agony.

And the next land he found, it was bare and hilly ground

Where once the bread-corn grew,

But the fields were cankered and the water was defiled,

And the trees were riven through;

And there was neither paved highway,

Nor secret path in the wood,

But had borne its weight of the broken clay,

And darkened 'neath the blood.

(_Father and Mother they put aside, and the nearer love also--

An hundred thousand men who died, whose grave shall no man know._)

And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground

Above a carven Stone,

And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross

Where high and low are one;

And there was grass and the living trees,

And the flowers of the Spring,

And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas

That ever called him King.

(_'Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four Red

Rivers spring

Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served the King._)

All that they had they gave--they gave--

In sure and single faith.

There can no knowledge reach the grave

To make them grudge their death

Save only if they understood

That, after all was done

We they redeemed denied their blood,

And mocked the gains it won.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

I: "_Our King went forth on pilgrimage._"

It was our King's wish that he should go as a private pilgrim, with no

trappings of state nor pomp of ceremony, and with only a small suite, to

visit the tombs in Belgium and France of his comrades who gave up their

lives in the Great War. In the uniform which they wore on service, he

passed from one to another of the cemeteries which, in their noble

simplicity, express perfectly the proud grief of the British race in their

dead; and, at the end, within sight of the white cliffs of England, spoke

his thoughts in a message of eloquence which moved all his Empire to

sympathy.

The Governments of France and of Belgium, our allies in the war for the

freedom of the world, respected the King's wish. Nowhere did official

ceremony intrude on an office of private devotion. But nothing could

prevent the people of the country-side gathering around the places which

the King visited, bringing with them flowers, and joining their tribute to

his. They acclaimed him not so much as King, but rather as the head of

those khaki columns which crossed the Channel to help to guard their

homes; in their minds the memory of the glad relief of August, 1914, when

they learnt that the British were with them in the war and felt that the

ultimate end was secure. Many of them were of the peasants who, before the

scattered graves of our dead had been gathered into enduring cemeteries,

had graced them with flowers, making vases of shell-cases gathered from

the battle-fields. The King was deeply moved by their presence, at seeing

them leave for an hour the task of building up their ruined homes and

shattered farms, and coming with pious gratitude to share his homage to

the men who had been faithful to their trust unto death. To those around

him he spoke more than once in thankful appreciation of this good feeling

of the people of France and Belgium. Especially was he pleased to see the

children of the country-side crowd around him, and when little choirs of

them sang "God Save the King" in quaintly accented words his feeling was

manifest.

There came thus to the pilgrimage from the first an atmosphere of

affectionate intimacy between these people who were not his subjects and

the British King. They gathered around him as around a friend, the old

women leaning forward to catch his words, the children trying to come

close enough to touch him, seeing in his uniform again the "Tommy" who had

proved such a gentle soul when he came for a brief rest from the horrors

of the battle-field to the villages behind the line and helped "mother"

with the housework and nursed the baby. At one village a gendarme, feeling

in his official soul that this was really no way to treat a King, tried to

arrange some more formal atmosphere. But in vain. The villagers saw the

old friendly good-humoured British Army back in France, and could not be

official.

Now and then at a cemetery the King met relatives, in some cases from

far-off Pacific Dominions, visiting their dead, and he stopped to speak

with them because they were on the same mission as he was, of gratitude

and reverence. One mother, moved by the kindness of the King's greeting,

opened her heart to him and told, with the simple eloquence of real

feeling, how she had just come from her son's grave and was proud that he

had died for his King and country; that every care had been taken to find

and identify it, and "more could not have been done if it had been the

Prince of Wales himself."

At several points the workers of the Imperial War Graves

Commission--practically all of whom had gone through the campaign, and now

are reverently and carefully tending the last resting-places of their

fallen comrades--assembled to greet the King. He spoke with them also,

giving them thanks for their work and noting their war medals and asking

them about their life in the camps, or with the mobile caravans which, in

the districts where housing cannot yet be found, move from cemetery to

cemetery, keeping fresh the tribute of grass and flowers and

trees--caravans which bring back vividly one's memory of the old British

supply columns, for they are almost invariably led by a small

self-important and well-fed dog.

When at Vlamertinghe--where are the graves of the first Dominion soldiers

who fell in the war--the High Commissioner for Canada, the Hon. P. C.

Larkin, was met visiting the Canadian graves there; the King gave him a

very warm greeting. He showed that there is never absent from his mind the

thought that in the greatest Ordeal of Battle which the British race has

had to pass through, the children nations of his Empire came to the side

of the Mother Country, with the instinctive spontaneity of the blood in a

limb responding to a message from the heart; and that the crimson tie of

kinship never broke nor slackened through all the perilous anxious years.

Across the sea, held for them as a safe path by the Navy, the men of the

Empire--and the women, too--kept passing at the King's word to whatsoever

point at which the peril was greatest, the work most exacting. The graves

of the Flanders battle-fields told triumphantly of this august Imperial

assembly--the dead of the Mother Country having around them those of

India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, the

West Indies, the Pacific Islands.[1] At every point the voices of the dead

bespoke, in the King's words, "the single-hearted assembly of nations and

races which form our Empire."

* * * * *

It was at the close of a State visit to the King of the Belgians that the

King left Brussels on a special train early on the morning of May 11. The

King lived on the train (in his own carriage which had been in France

throughout the war) during the tour, motor-cars meeting it at fixed

halting-places for the visits to the cemeteries. He was accompanied by

Field-Marshal Earl Haig, whom His Majesty specially wished to be at his

side on this pilgrimage. The Royal Party was a small one; in addition to

Lord Haig, it consisted of Major-General Sir Fabian Ware (who, as

Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was in charge of all

the arrangements) and of three members of the suite, the Rt. Hon. Sir

Frederick Ponsonby, Colonel Clive Wigram, and Major R. Seymour. The first

visit paid was to Zeebrugge Churchyard, where rest some of those who fell

in the Zeebrugge Battle which marked St. George's Day, 1918. Many of the

graves are still unidentified, but, with the aid of enemy burial lists

recently secured, it is hoped that the identity of some, at any rate, will

be established. There was, by the King's express wish, no formal ceremony

at this nor any other cemetery before Terlincthun, but the school children

of Zeebrugge assembled and sang the British National Anthem and brought

flowers for the graves.

The King went on to examine the scene of the exploit of _Vindictive_ and

her supporting ships. The day was bright and breezy, and, by a happy

chance, a Belgian fishing fleet was making for harbour with the night's

harvest of the sea. To the eye of the sailor this gave clear indication of

the lay of the harbour approaches and of its entrance, and helped

materially to illustrate the way in which the Mole was approached and the

task with which the British naval forces were faced. The King took the

keenest interest in every detail of the exploit and of the tactics

employed. He stayed for some time at the point where the submarine, loaded

with high explosives, rammed the Mole to breach it, with the double object

of cutting off the enemy garrison on the Mole from reinforcements and of

helping the obstacles which were to be sunk in the fairway to silt up the

harbour by letting in the drifting sands. The positions where the ships

were sunk in the fairway were examined, and the King, with his

professional knowledge of the Service in which he spent his young manhood,

could reconstruct the whole battle. He made particular inspection of the

spot where the landing party from _Vindictive_ scaled the Mole--perhaps

the most astonishing "boarding" feat of naval history.

With some reluctance the King turned his back to the sea, and the Royal

party went on by train to Zonnebeke. Here the party left the train and

proceeded by car to visit Tyne Cot Cemetery, which is in the midst of what

was the most desolate and terrible of all battle-fields--the Passchendaele

marshes. Tyne Cot (or cottage) was on the north side of the Ypres-Roulers

railway, near the village of Passchendaele. It was here that the enemy

first built their "pill boxes" or concrete forts. The water-logged ground

would not allow of the construction of dug-outs nor of effective shelter

trenches, and the enemy sought to hold their line with these strong points

of reinforced concrete, heavily armed with machine guns, to attack which

the British storming infantry often had to wade waist-deep in mire up to

the very muzzles of the guns.

No part of the long trench line which stretched from the sea to

Switzerland has such shuddering memories for the British Army as

Passchendaele. There it had the problem of storming a whole series of

miniature Zeebrugge Moles standing in seas of slimy mud, to sink into

which from the narrow built paths of trench-boards was to perish. Of the

nine thousand British soldiers buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery, over six

thousand are "unknown." The hateful mud swallowed up their identity with

their lives.

Many places on the long trench line which stretched like a dreadful scar

across Belgium and France the King knew during the days of the war. Very

jealously the secrets of his visits to the Front had to be guarded then,

especially when both the King and the Heir Apparent were at the same time

in the battle-line; and no public record exists of them. But it is safe to

say that Tyne Cot he saw for the first time this May afternoon. He

understood how appalling was the task which his soldiers faced there, and,

turning to the great "pill box" which still stands in the middle of the

cemetery, he said that it should never be moved, should remain always as a

monument to the heroes whose graves stood thickly around. From its roof he

gazed sadly over the sea of wooden crosses, a "massed multitude of silent

witnesses to the desolation of war." It is indeed fitting that this should

form, as it will, the foundation for the great Cross of Sacrifice shortly

to be built up as a central memorial in this cemetery.

[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE

ARRIVAL AT THE MOLE]

[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE

INSPECTING THE MOLE]

[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE

AT THE BREACH IN THE MOLE]

[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE CHURCHYARD

INSPECTING BRITISH GRAVES]

[Illustration: AT BRANDHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY.]

[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY

THE KING AND THE GARDENERS]

[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY]

[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY

THE KING READING INSCRIPTIONS ON WOODEN CROSSES]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY

INSPECTING THE GERMAN BLOCKHOUSE WHICH WILL FORM THE BASE OF THE CENTRAL

MEMORIAL]

[Illustration: YPRES TOWN CEMETERY

THE GRAVE OF H.H. PRINCE MAURICE OF BATTENBERG]

[Illustration: YPRES TOWN CEMETERY]

[Illustration: MENIN GATE, YPRES

EXAMINING THE PLANS FOR THE MEMORIAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE]

[Illustration: VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY]

[Illustration: VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY

THE BURGOMASTER'S DAUGHTER PRESENTING A WREATH]

[Illustration:

_Our King went forth on pilgrimage

His prayer and vows to pay

To them that saved our heritage

And cast their own away._]

[Illustration: "_I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in honour of a people

who died for all free men_"]

II: "_It was low and hollow ground where once the cities stood_"

The King's route after leaving Tyne Cot Cemetery brought him to the

salient where the British Army held Ypres as the gate guarding the Channel

ports. The enemy rush to Paris had failed, and he was seeking a way to

victory by a rush to seize the French side of the English Channel as a

prelude to the invasion of England. In the first Battle of Ypres the enemy

sought with enormous superiority of numbers to overwhelm the British force

which barred the Calais Road. To hold Ypres was vital, and yet Ypres was,

humanly speaking, indefensible, within a saucer-shaped salient dominated

on three sides by the German artillery.

The attack was pushed on with fierce energy from October 21st, 1914,

onwards, and was met with heroic stubbornness by a woefully thin khaki

line. At one stage there was no question of reliefs. Every man practically

in the British Force, including cooks and batmen, was in the front line,

and these men held to the trenches day after day, night after night,

without sleep, with little food, with no intermission from rifle and shell

fire.

During the second Battle of Ypres, in the spring of 1915, the war took on

a new phase with the enemy use of asphyxiating gas as a weapon. Of this

odious and unexpected form of warfare the Canadians were the first

victims, but withstood the surprise with a cool heroism which saved the

day.

There were other battles of Ypres, and all the land around was saturated

with the blood of heroes. So this "low and hollow ground," stiffened with

our dead, is holy soil to the British race. The King chose fitly to render

there his homage to the dead of the Belgian Army who on the Yser held the

left flank of the line through all the years of bitter fighting for Ypres.

On his way to the Menin Gate of Ypres city, the King directed the cars to

turn aside to the Town Cemetery, that he might stand silent for a few

moments by the graves of Prince Maurice of Battenberg, Lord Charles

Mercer-Nairne, Major the Hon. W. Cadogan, and other officers, some of

those of his own personal friends whom the war claimed, and whose graves

lie among those of their men, marked by the same simple memorials.

* * * * *

Ypres to-day is no longer a mass of shell-shattered ruins. The work of

reconstruction has been carried on earnestly, and thousands of new houses

have been built. But nothing can ever restore the mediaeval beauty of the

city which grew like a noble wood in carved stone on the Flanders Plain.

The ruins of the Cloth Hall will remain as the monument of the old city

which was once a world's capital for those who wove wool into fine cloth.

The old ramparts at the Menin Gate--stout walls which provided security

for the British signallers even in the most furious bombardments--will

remain as another monument, an effective symbol of the British Army at

Ypres, very sorely battered, but still holding secure.

It is proposed by the Imperial War Graves Commission that at the Menin

Gate there should be a memorial to those of the Empire's Armies who fell

in this area but have no known graves. It will crown these ramparts with a

great double arch, enclosing a vaulted hall, in which will be recorded the

names of all those lost in the neighbouring battle-fields whose bodies

have not been recovered and identified. The design provides that the arch

facing Menin, where once the foe was drawn up, will be surmounted by the

great figure of a lion alert in defence, the arch facing Ypres by some

other symbolical sculpture.

* * * * *

The King was met at the Menin Gate by representatives of the Belgian

Government and Army, by Major Michelet and M. Lorel of the Belgian Graves

Services, and by the Burgomaster of Ypres. The industrious re-builders of

Ypres paused from their work for an hour and assembled to give him a

hearty greeting. The King entrusted a chaplet of palms and bay leaves with

a spray of red roses in memory of the Belgian dead to Major Michelet. He

then congratulated the Burgomaster on the progress his citizens were

making with the work of reconstruction. Sir Reginald Blomfield, architect

of the memorial at the Menin Gate, submitted to the King the designs and

plans of the monument. His Majesty emphasised the need that the names

inscribed should be clear to all to read.

* * * * *

Leaving the Menin Gate, the King passed by the ruins of the Cloth Hall and

of the Cathedral, noting the irreparable loss to the world through the

destruction of these magnificent examples of Flemish architecture. It was

observed that the drivers found it somewhat difficult to find a way

through the new Ypres which is growing up under the industrious hands of

the Belgian population. Ypres, the "Museum City" of 1914, is known to

many. The "Wipers" of 1918, a tumble of desolation through which the

soldiers passed under constant shell fire by burrowed paths, became

familiar to almost every British regiment. But this new, re-building Ypres

is a stranger.

The route of the pilgrimage went from Ypres to Vlamertinghe, passing on

the way the British cemetery behind Ypres Reservoir, the Asylum British

Cemetery, the cemetery on the Dickebusch Road, and the Railway Chateau

Cemetery. At Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery the King stopped and, as has

already been noted, visited the Canadian graves with the High Commissioner

for Canada, as well as paying his tribute to the many British buried

there. This cemetery, between Poperinghe and Ypres, was begun by the

French troops, then holding part of the line here. It contains 1,114

graves of British soldiers, 52 of Canadian, 4 of Australian, 2 of South

African, 2 of soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, one of an

Indian soldier, and one of an unknown soldier. Very many of the British

graves are of Territorial dead. There are, for example, nearly 250

Lancashire Territorials buried there: those splendid men who proved, both

in Gallipoli and France, that the town-bred population of the Mother

Country was fit, in courage and endurance, to rank with the historic

regiments of the line and with the young giants from the Oversea

Dominions.

* * * * *

From Vlamertinghe, along the granite-set roads which were for years

pounded by our ammunition wagons and supply trains, but the dust arising

from which now proclaims the works of peace as the country-folk drive

their carts loaded with bricks and timber for re-building, the King went

on to the Hop Store Cemetery, greeted everywhere with cordial sympathy.

Hop Store village was used from time to time as headquarters both by our

heavy artillery and by our field ambulances. The site of the cemetery is

on a marshy patch of ground, but it was drained by the Royal Engineers

early in 1917, and recently a moat has been constructed on three sides. It

holds 247 of our dead.

From Hop Store the King went on to Brandhoek, which was a comparatively

safe area during the war, and therefore a post for field ambulances. The

old Military Cemetery, which the King visited, was opened in May, 1915, in

a field adjoining the Dressing Station, and was closed in July, 1917. It

shelters the bodies of 601 soldiers from the Home Country, 62 from Canada,

4 from Australia, and 2 of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps. In July,

1917, the Military Cemetery was opened 300 yards away, and in August,

1917, a third cemetery was opened.

Poperinghe was next visited. This agricultural town on the road between

Ypres and Hazebrouck, situated among hopfields and dairy farms, was a

haven of rest in the early days of the war. Although occasionally

bombarded at long range, it was the nearest town to Ypres which was

reasonably safe. It was at first a casualty clearing station centre.

Later, in 1916, when shell fire increased, it was decided to move back the

casualty clearing station to a safer zone, and Poperinghe became a field

ambulance station. The earliest British graves at Poperinghe are in the

Communal Cemetery, a walled graveyard at the entrance to the town. The

old Military Cemetery was made in the course of the first Battle of Ypres,

and was closed (so far as British burials were concerned) in May, 1915.

The New Military Cemetery was made in June, 1915. It contains the graves

of 596 soldiers from the Home Country, 55 from Canada, 20 from Australia,

3 from New Zealand, and 2 of the British West Indies Regiment.

Lijssenthoek was the last of the cemeteries on Belgian soil visited. This

cemetery is at Remy Siding, on the south side of the Hazebrouck-Ypres

railway line, between Poperinghe and Abeele. The site was first used for

burials by a French military hospital, and there is a group of French

graves on what is now the eastern boundary of the cemetery. The earliest

British burial dates from June, 1915. This cemetery had to be repeatedly

enlarged as the campaign levied its toll on our forces. It now contains

9,795 British and Dominion graves, 892 French, 2 Belgian, 52 American, and

32 Chinese. The majority of burials took place from the Canadian casualty

clearing stations at Remy. Of the French graves, 10 are those of unknown

soldiers and 689 will remain in the cemetery.

* * * * *

Going out of Belgium to France the sun was shining and the graciousness of

Nature, covering with herb and blossom the ulcers of the old

battle-fields, made this corner of Flanders seem a fair and human country.

For those who now saw the district for the first time, the concrete forts

lying like the bleached skeletons of strange monsters in the fields, and

the serried ranks of the graves, coming up in line after line to give

their mute witness, told something of what it cost to hold the Ypres

Salient. But the King knew all that it had been in the long dark winters

of the war, when the very abomination of desolation brooded over it, and

in its pools of slime his soldiers struggled and choked that the fields of

England might be kept free of the foe. He did not hide from those with him

that the memory of it weighed heavy on him and that in his mind, with

pride in the thought of such superhuman devotion, there was a passionate

hope that never again in the world's history would men be called upon to

suffer as these men had suffered.

Speaking, too, of the cemeteries, where general and private rest side by

side beneath the same simple stones, equal in the honour of their death

for duty's sake, he agreed that this was the only possible way.