Lizerne (June, 1915)
By Dr. Duwez, Army Surgeon to the Regiment of Grenadiers
We were walking along the winding attack trench, skirting the Yperlée. It is a trench that gradually gets more and more shallow. Just where it ends, the dead bodies of two French soldiers were lying, their faces black and unrecognisable. Water was running over the injured thigh of one of them and his flesh was as red as his trousers. The brook among the wild grasses was full of rubbish of all sorts; and the tall trees sheltering it were either headless, or they had been mown down, and were lying shattered on the ground. Some of the branches had resprouted and the muddy brooklet, in which mouldy bread and tins of provisions were floating, continued to flow slowly on. Polluted, but glorious, it went on over crumbling tree trunks and improvised bridges, past earth shelters and mud banks towards archways that, in the distance, appear to be covered with flowers. It was flowing on towards that old gay, laughing valley, little known formerly, but which now bears the charming and terrible name of the "covered road of the Yperlée."
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We then went along the other trench, in which are the tombs of many of our men. A foot could be seen emerging from the parapet, and everywhere was that odour that one can never forget, the odour that reveals the presence of dead bodies more distinctly than the sight of them.
We then went along the parallel one. It curves inwards near Lizerne and we crossed the road under the district-railway.
By dint of creeping, climbing, and running, we managed to reach the German trench which forms an arched circle on the other side of the village. It had been entirely overturned by the shells. We could see grey coats that had been left behind, stiffened legs emerging from the embankment, and cartridges. The houses, behind which the trench had been constructed, had fallen down, whole pieces of the walls together, but there was more character about them than those of Steenstraete, as they showed that they had been houses. The whole of the back of one house had fallen all in a piece. Under the ruins could be seen three dead bodies of Joyeux,[13] their skulls crushed and covered with long, dull brown hair. I crossed the road and entered a little house, the general sitting-room of which was still intact. A Boche was lying there with his limbs stretched out, his face black, his nose flattened, and his eyes sunken. Flies had left their traces on his chin and cheeks. He had evidently been searched, as the buttons of his coat had been cut off, but he still had his boots on.
The whole hamlet was nothing but a heap of ruins. Guns, bayonets, beds of sacking, and belts were flung about everywhere. The dead could scarcely be dis[Pg 342]tinguished from the ground which partially covered them. Shells had hollowed out holes everywhere and on r............