BOOK REVIEWS
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Salient Points |
This book demanded my attention from the moment I opened it and saw that it begins with a photograph of Larch Wood (Railway Cutting) Cemetery near Hill 60. My first ever visit to Ypres was made just to see this cemetery, which is the last resting-place of a soldier whose life I had been researching. It's an isolated place which receives few visitors, but it has a story to tell - if you know its significance.
And this is the key to this book - Tony Spagnoly and Ted Smith DO know the significance of places which most of us would pass by without a second glance. The many memorials, great and small, around Ypres focus our attention on the long and vicious struggles which took place in the area. But behind and around these memorial focal-points are the very places where triumph and tragedy occurred, where brave men fought their individual battles. These places are harder to find, and harder to learn about 80 years on, but they are the raw material of which the Ypres Salient Legend is made.
The book consists of 17 cameos - each one a battlefield guide within itself with photographs, maps and notes. The subjects vary from the monumental to the very intimate. Here you can learn about the small, insignificant concrete shelter which stands, ivy-covered, near Wytschaete on the road from Ypres to Messines. I have driven past it many times, but never knew it was there until I read "Salient Points." Insignificant now, it was once the command centre of a huge German defensive position here, heavily fought over. The full story is here, as is that of the two boy-officers, one a nineteen year old who had been in France for barely 24 hours, the other a "veteran" 20-year-old who had been out for nine months. On an otherwise quiet evening in March, 1916, near St. Eloi, a single, isolated German shell killed them both as they led their men towards the front line. Today they lie buried next to each other in Reninghelst New Military Cemetery, but how many visitors to the cemetery would be aware of the story, without this book?
How many of today's visitors to the battlefield would notice or recognise the significance of a small depression in such-and-such a field near le Gheer? Or the story behind the quiet, tiny pond at St Yves?
This is an excellent book which I'm glad to have discovered. It will guide future visits to Ypres for a long time to come, but it's also a great source of information and inspiration for the "armchair pilgrim" sitting by the fire at home. I'm glad that I found it and I look forward to the promised second volume in the series.
SALIENT POINTS - Cameos of the Western Front, Ypres Sector, 1914-18
is published by
Leo Cooper/Pen and Sword Books Ltd. ISBN 0-85052-319-2
Paperback, A5, 178 pages, maps, photographs.
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