New Britain herald., 1915-07-07
TURRETS AT YPRES
 STILL HOLDING OUT
City Dead as Deserted Mining
 Camp in Alaska

21. Correspondence Associated Pra.s, | How are the turrets? St.ll hold l ing out, ?" they ask up and down the | lines of any one who has come from | Ypres. Everybody has a tender per- | sonal interest in the turrets of the old Cloth Hall which deepens with each day that they survive in defiance of the German gunners above the wreckage wrought by German shells.
 People are still alive in Rheims and Louvain, but Ypres is absolutely a dead city--dead as Pompeii-dead as a deserted mining camp in Alaska. No face appears in any door or window that can still be called door or win dow-no figures are seen moving through the shell holes in walls that are still standing
 Had fSOOO Inhabitants.
 Before the war Ypres had some
 eighteen thousand inhabitants. Now
 1t has not a single one. No one
 is making any effort to make any ruin habitable The only signs of life except occasional soldiers coming out and going to the lines are cats grown wild which become streaks of fur disappearing among the ruins of their former homes
 The Cathedral which stands back
 of the Cloth Hall was a noble edifice no doubt, but there are great many
 cathedra1s in Europe. The Cloth
 Hall is unique--the best of it's kind.
 Anyone who ever saw it always re-
 membered It's turrets Different conquerors of Ypres put her women and children to the sword but no one had even harmed the old Cloth Hall
 beyond taking away few statutes. One House Hit.
 Last February perhaps four or five 1 thousand people remained in Ypres. They were going and coming about l the streets as usual keeping their
 shops open and doing what business | they could at the old stand A visi- | tor could get a meal in a restaurant | or have his shoes cobbled Only one
 house in the big square had been hit.
 Its roofs dropped over the edges of 1 a corner section which had been torn l out of the main floor.
 The Germans threw in occasional
 shells mostly directed at the Cathedral | with some of the misses bound to hit 1 the Cloth Hall. Restoration work which age required had just been fln- ished on the Cloth Hall before the
 war began. The people paid for, this l in their civic pride and let other i'm l provements wait. For the Cloth Hall
 gave Ypres a civic distinction. It
 was the historical soul of Ypres. The
 old frescoes on it's walls told the city's l early history. It meant to Ypres quite as much in it's way as Westmip- ster Abbey to London or Fanieul Hall | of Boston. Every man or woman
 born in Ypres had been brought up
 to tell the time of day by the raised gilt figures of the old golden cloth 1 face
 Sense Of Horror Exhausted. By February the peoples sense of horror was exhausted. Destruction of things sacred to them had be- come routine. When they heard another explosion and word was pass ed that the Germans had scored an- other hit they went around to the Grande Place to see if the turrets and the gilt clock face were still unharm ed. And they said The Cloth Hali still can be restored"-these stubborn Flemish who would not let shell fire drive them away from their old town. The next time The Associated Press
 correspondent went to Ypres there was not a single house left on the l Grande Place that resembled a house any more than rubber bag with the gas out of it resembles a balloon. Tn the second battle of Ypres when the Germans had another try for the Channel ports the sensation of their l attack with asphyxiat.ng gas over- shadowed what they did with their i guns Heretofore their practice on Ypres had been comparatively teas 1 ing playfulness. This time they went
 at the job of destruction systematicai- | ly jumping from one space on the
 checkerboard to another they smash 1 ed Ypres section by section.
 Seemed Poor Policy.
 As they meant to take the town ] this seemed poor policy for they 1 would find no roofs for shelter when l ey moved in. But their object was 1 confusion for British reinforcem ents hurying up along roads crowded with 1 refugees; wholesale death for men I in billets in. town and destruction and l delay for supplies and munitions 1 coming through the streets. This l was excellent theory which did not 1 work out, in practice. The British l were not billeting troops to any ev- l tent in Ypres and you could count 1 the number of army wagons hit on | the fingers of one hand. One shell l in the British trenches accomplished 1 more than ten into Ypres. The main result was that the homes and offices ! and cafes of eighteen thousand peo- l ple were destroyed
 The 42-centimeter GIT inch nor tar) had its part in the work. With g seventeen inch shell struck house the remains of the building not dis tributed on the pavement were in an enlarged cellar. Debris in the streets still remains where it fell. There is no purpose in cleaning it up in an ,,,,;,, Ia h;+ad town Paving Stopes II