As the
last wagon was leaving, I heard a sound like a train leaving a
depot--choo! choo! choo! choo! growing louder each instant, and as the
tail-end of the last wagon was trotting out of the square a shell, the
largest ever employed by the German command and called the Ypres
Express, landed full in the square, killing every living thing there and
destroying ambulances and wagons of every kind, catching our rear wagon
and blowing it up, wounding the driver and destroying the magnificent
Cloth Hall, the last vestige of this most beautiful piece of
architecture being destroyed by the resulting fire. That shell was from
one of two guns that were expressly manufactured for the purpose of
destroying the city of Ypres, a couple of months being taken to build
cement platforms in which to set the ordnance, and the death-dealing
monsters started on their mission of destruction from Dixmude, about 22
miles distant.
[Illustration: British Battery in Action]
Not long after, an airplane located these monsters and succeeded in
destroying one by a downpour of explosives he dropped on it, and the
other one, a couple of days following, when being fired by its crew,
the shell exploded in the gun itself, tearing it from its cement
foundation and destroying itself and crew.
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