It was the only undestroyed building I saw in Ypres.
"It is the only house," said the General, "where the inhabitants
remained during the entire bombardment. They made coffee for the
soldiers and served meals to officers. Shells hit the pavement and
broke the windows; but the house itself is intact. It is
extraordinary."
We stopped at the one-time lunatic asylum on our way back. It had been
converted into a hospital for injured civilians, and its long wards
were full of women and children. An English doctor was in charge.
Some of the buildings had been destroyed, but in the main it had
escaped serious injury. By a curious fatality that seems to have
followed the chapels and churches of Flanders, the chapel was the only
part that was entirely gone. One great shell struck it while it was
housing soldiers, as usual, and all of them were killed. As an example
of the work of one shell the destruction of that building was
enormous. There was little or nothing left.
"The shell was four feet high," said the Doctor, and presented me with
the nose of it.
"You may get more at any moment," I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. "What must be, must be," he said quietly.
When the bombardment was at its height, he said, they took their
patients to the cellar and continued operating there.
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