THE CHALLENGE OF THE DEAD
BOOKS BY STEPHEN GRAHAM
A Vagabond in the Caucasus
Undiscovered Russia
A Tramp's Sketches
Changing Russia
With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem
With Poor Emigrants to America
Russia and the World
The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary
Through Russian Central Asia
Priest of the Ideal
Russia in 1916
The Quest of the Face
A Private in the Guards
Children of the Slaves
The Challenge of the Dead
The Challenge of the Dead
A vision of the war and the life
of the common soldier in France,
seen two years afterwards between
August and November, 1920
By
Stephen Graham
Cassell and Company, Ltd
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1921
The Challenge of the Dead
The suns shines and a strong wind lifts the waves toward the land; theblue sea, in happy commotion, throws armfuls of white spray across thelong stone breakwater which is called Zeebruges Mole. The white stoneway goes two miles out to sea, and is swept by a marine healthiness.Upon it at intervals stand the German guns with the ends of theirbarrels burst out like thistle-heads. They point o'er the sea; they havetheir armoured shelter on the inner side of which on the level with thegunner's eye stand inscribed in neat German schrift the distances toall places of importance within gunshot—greenish-yellow camouflagedGerman guns with something of the tiger in their expression. On the leeside of the Mole cling the giant sheds of hydroplanes—as it were,hooked to the side of the great stone wall. In the quieter water on thisside of the Mole one sees jutting out of the fairway the tops of vesselssunk there in 1918, and near by is a tablet marking the spot where thelanding-party of the Vindictive made its daring raid upon the foe.
Zeebruges! A party of school-children in "croc" are being escorted along[Pg 2]the way by nuns; the Smiths of Surbiton have scrawled their names on theguns. There is a half-way house on the Mole now where one drinks beerand buys a picture postcard, or at the base of the Mole and lookingoutward toward England, one may dine alfresco at a Grand Palace Hotel.But what of that! The whole is sun-drowned and wind-swept and bare andopen with a spaciousness and grandeur which are ample for the soul. Thebreeze which blows from England slackens nothing ere it reaches thosefields where the wild flowers and the rushes bloom.
The mind goes back to 1914 and that great October when Antwerp fell butYpres was held—when the last transports rolled alongside this gloriousMole bearing the Seventh Division, soon to be called, in faith,immortal, because half its number was destroyed before the war was veryold.
October fifth they sailed away
Upon the salt sea's raging spray
And landed safe in Bruges bay
Upon their way to Ypres.
They stepped up from the boats, new, ruddy, well equipped, intact—theyrolled forward, w