World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
The church was just opposite the priest's house. I went across the road
to look at it. It was a large reddish-grey stone building, pretty old, I
should say, and surrounded by a graveyard. Shell holes everywhere; the
old, grey grave stones and slabs cracked and sticking about at odd
angles. As I entered by the vestry door I noticed the tower was fairly
all right, but that was about the only part that was. Belgium and
Northern France are full of churches which have been sadly knocked
about, and all present very much the same appearance. I will describe
this one to give you a sample. I went through the vestry into the main
part of the church, deciding to examine the vestry later. The roof had
had most of the tiles blown off, and underneath them the roofing-boards
had been shattered into long narrow strips. Fixed at one end to what was
left of the rafters they flapped slowly up and down in the air like
lengths of watch-spring. Below, on the floor of the church, the chairs
were tossed about in the greatest possible disorder, and here and there
a dozen or so had been pulverized by the fall of an immense block of
masonry. Highly coloured images were lying about, broken and twisted.
The altar candelabra and stained-glass windows lay in a heap together
behind a pulpit, the front of which had been knocked off by a falling
pillar. One could walk about near some of the broken images, and pick up
little candles and trinkets which had been put in and around the shrine,
off the floor and from among the mass of broken stones and mortar. The
vestry, I found, was almost complete. Nearly trodden out of recognition
on the floor, I found a bright coloured hand-made altar cloth, which I
then had half a mind to take away with me, and post it back to some
parson in England to put in his church. I only refrained from carrying
out this plan as I feared that the difficulties of getting it away would
be too great. I left the church, and looked about some of the other
houses, but none proved as pathetically interesting as the church and
the vicar's house, so I took my way out across the fields again towards
the Douve farm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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