New Years Eve 1917 - from Edmund Blunden.

New Years Eve 1917 is vividly described by Edmund Blunden in his wonderful book, ‘Undertones of War’.

He spent Christmas and New Year in the Ypres Salient.

‘Undertones of War’ is one of the finest books written and his personal vibrant account of the war. It is a must read for anyone interested in the war.


“At the moment of midnight, December 31, 1917, I stood with some acquaintances in a camp finely overlooking the whole Ypres battlefield. It was bitterly cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen. We drank healths, and stared out across the snowy miles to the casual flares, still rising and floating and dropping. Their writing on the night was as the earliest scribbling of children, meaningless; they answered none of the questions with which a watcher’s eyes were painfully wide. Midnight; succession of coloured lights from one point, of white ones from another, bullying salutes of guns in brief bombardment, crackling of machine-guns small on the tingling air; but the sole answer to unspoken but important questions was the line of lights in the same relation to Flanders as at midnight a year before.

All agreed that 1917 had been a sad offender. All observed that 1918 did not look promising at its birth.”