Part 27

Just then a non-commissioned officer came along and ordered him back into the ranks; the motor started ahead, and I lost track of the boy in a cloud of dust.

At the edge of town we caught up with a British Legation motor, which was stopped at a railroad barricade. Its occupants roared with laughter when they saw us, and Colonel Fairholme gloated particularly, as he had prophesied that we would not get through. When we got back to the hotel we were met with more laughter. It was the great joke of the week to see the only people who had previously been successful in running the lines, caught like the rest of them. I was not at all down in the mouth, as Antwerp was most interesting, and I had left only because I had felt it my duty to get back to work and to keep the Minister from worrying. When I saw that there was no way of getting through I gladly accepted the decree of fate.

When we got back to Antwerp I soon learned that it would be out of the question to get back to Brussels the next day, or perhaps even the day after that. The Belgians were advancing to an enveloping movement and all the surrounding country was to be covered with Belgian troops in an endeavour to deal a smashing blow to the Germans and compel them to bring back more troops from the front in France. Colonel Fairholme asked me to accompany him to the front next morning, and I accepted with an alacrity which startled him.

After dinner I made another excursion into the darkness and told Monsieur de Woeste that there was no prospect of getting back to Brussels the next day. His colleagues, who were there also, impressed upon him the futility of going, and he finally resigned himself to staying, although he kept insisting that he infinitely preferred danger to boredom, which was his lot so long, as he had nothing to do but sit around the hotel.

Friday morning while I was waiting for the Colonel to get ready and was doing my little errands down town, there came a great roaring of a crowd, and the chauffeur, knowing my curiosity, put on steam and spurted down to the boulevards just in time to run into a batch of three hundred German prisoners being brought in. They were a dejected-looking crowd, most of them Landsturm, haggard and sullen. The crowd, mindful of the things the Germans have been doing to this little country, were in no friendly mood, but did nothing violent. There was only a small guard of Belgian Garde Civique to escort the prisoners, but there were no brickbats or vegetables. The people limited themselves to hoots and catcalls and hisses--which were pretty thick. And even this was frowned upon by the authorities. Within a couple of hours the Military Governor had posted a proclamation begging the people of Antwerp to maintain a more dignified attitude and to refrain from any hostile demonstration against other prisoners. This batch was surrounded, and caught at Aerschot, where the Germans are said to have committed all sorts of atrocities for the past three weeks. Among the prisoners was the commanding officer, who was accused of being responsible for a lot of the outrages. He was examined by the military court, which sits for the purpose, and admitted having done most of the things of which he was accused, pleading in his own defence that he had done them only in obedience to superior orders, to which he had protested. The soldiers who made the capture disclaimed a large part of the credit for it on the ground that most of the Germans were drunk and that they were too dazed to get to their arms. Stories of this sort keep piling in from every side.

We got away at eleven to Lierre, where the King has established his headquarters for his movement. The road lay to the southeast and was through country I had not traversed before. The aspect was the same, however--long stretches of destroyed houses and felled trees, barbed-wire entanglements and inundated fields. It is a mournful sight.

Little Lierre was unharmed, and I hope it may remain so. The Grande Place was filled with staff motors, and there was a constant coming and going of motors and motorcycles bearing messengers to and from the field of operations. Headquarters was established in the Hotel de Ville, which bears on its tower the date 1369--a fine old building, not large, but beautiful.

In the morning a message had come ordering Colonel DuCane back to England. He was out in the field, and we had to wait until he came in to deliver it to him. The King was also away, but we put in our time talking with the officers on duty as to the movement and its progress, and then went out for a stroll around the town. We looked into the old church, and I stopped and bought an officer's forage cap as a souvenir of the place. By the time we had poked around the neighbourhood and inspected the other Sehenswuerdigkeiten of the town it was lunch time and we joined an officers' mess in the back room of a little cafe on the square, and then, to kill time, sat in front of another cafe and had coffee and a cigar.

We could not get started until Colonel DuCane had returned and received his message, so we sat in front of our little cafe and growled. It was maddening to waste our time there while the guns were thundering all around us and we knew from the signs of activity at headquarters that big things were toward. After a time a little man, the Senator for the district, came out and asked us into his house, directly across the street from the Hotel de Ville. It was raining hard and we were ready for a change, so we accepted gladly and were entertained with champagne and cigars to the music of falling rain and booming cannon.

Our Senator was very much down in the mouth about the situation in general and wanted to talk about it. The Colonel told him of the bulletins that had been published in Antwerp as to the progress of the campaign, and as this went on he cheered up visibly minute by minute--whether as a result of the good news or the champagne, I don't know.

The Colonel was called away after a time to talk to Lord Kitchener over the telephone. Kitchener keeps himself informed directly as to the progress of operations and the knowledge that he may drop in over the telephone at any minute gives his officers a very comforting feeling that they are not forgotten.

Finally, after dark, Colonel DuCane and Captain Ferguson came in, and we got under way. It was too late to go forward with hopes of seeing anything, but it was evident that things would be as hot as ever the next day and that I could not hope to get my charges back to Brussels. Accordingly the Colonel's invitation was extended and accepted, and we turned back toward Antwerp considerably disappointed.

While we were waiting around trying to make up our minds--if any--I ran into young Strauss, the half-American, who was in the armoured car behind young de Ligne. He was really the principal hero of the occasion, having stood bolt upright in his car and riddled the German forces with his mitrailleuse until the few survivors turned and fled. He had with him two of the other survivors of his party. All of them had been decorated with the Order of Leopold for their behaviour. An order like that looks pretty well on a private's uniform, particularly when given with such good reason.

We had retreated inside the Hotel de Ville during a particularly heavy downpour of rain, when in came the King, who had spent the whole day in the field with the troops. He was drenched to the skin, but came briskly up the steps, talking seriously with his aide-de-camp. He stopped and spoke with us all and took Colonel DuCane into his study and had a few minutes talk with him by way of farewell. The King shows up finely in the present situation and all the foreign military attaches are enthusiastic about his ability. He is in supreme command of the army and no detail is too insignificant for his attention.

We got the password and made back for Antwerp in the dark, leaving Colonel DuCane and Captain Ferguson to spend the night at Lierre. We were in bad luck and got stopped at every railroad crossing along the way. Troop and supply trains were pouring down toward the front and Red Cross trains were bringing back the wounded in large numbers. Both sides must have suffered heavily during the day, and there may be several days more of this sort of fighting before there is a lull.

When we got back to the hotel we found Sir Francis waiting for us with a glowing telegram and an equally glowing face. It was the most enthusiastic message yet received from the British War Office, which has been very restrained in its daily bulletins. For the first time that day it spoke with a little punch, speaking of the "routed enemy" and their being "vigorously pressed." We tumbled through a hasty bath and got down to dinner in short order.

After dinner it was the same old performance of going over to the Grand Hotel and labouring with Monsieur de Woeste, who was still bent on getting home to his clean linen without further delay. It took the united arguments of the Cabinet, which was in session, to convince him that it would be useless and foolish to try to get away. Finally he yielded, with a worse grace than on the previous evening. I had a comfortable visit with several of the Ministers, who were glad to hear news of their families in Brussels, and asked me to remember all sorts of messages to be given on my return. I only hope that I shall not get the messages mixed and get too affectionate with the wrong people. The Cabinet was going through the latest telegrams from the various fields of action. They even had some from Servia and were decidedly cheered up, a big change from the dogged determination with which they were facing bad news the last time I was in Antwerp.

Saturday morning the Colonel and I were called at six, and at seven we got away in a pouring rain over the same road to Lierre that we had travelled the day before. There was a big force of workmen hard at it in the vicinity of the outer forts, burning houses and chopping down trees and building barbed-wire entanglements. It is a scene of desolation, but it is necessary in a fight like this.

We found things moving rapidly at headquarters in Lierre. Messengers were pouring in and orders going out with twice the activity of the day before. The movement had been under way for two hours when we got there and the guns were booming all around. After learning as much as we could of the disposition of the troops we went out and stocked up with bread, cheese, and mineral water, and started forth to see what we could of the operations. We took along a young officer from headquarters to show us the road. We soon saw that he did not know the roads and could not even read a map, and had to take over that work ourselves. Colonel Fairholme and I went in my motor with the headquarters passenger and Colonel DuCane and Ferguson followed in their own car with an orderly. We got to Malines without difficulty and got out for a look at the Cathedral. It is a dreadful sight, all the wonderful old fifteenth century glass in powder on the floor. Part of the roof is caved in and there are great gaping holes in the lawn, showing where the shells struck that fell short of their mark. A few of the surrounding houses, belonging to entirely peaceful citizens, were completely wiped out while they were getting the range. It is hard to see what useful military purpose is served by smashing churches and peaceful habitations, when there are no troops about the place. Malines was bombarded when the troops had withdrawn. It is hard to reconcile with Gott mit uns.

Before we left Lierre, nine troopers of the Landsturm were marched into the hallway of the Hotel de Ville, to be examined by the officer who is there for that purpose. They were a depressed lot who had run away and given themselves up, so as to be spared the hardships and dangers of the rest of the war. They answered questions freely, telling all they knew as to the disposition of troops and making their get-away toward the local lockup with great alacrity as soon as the word was given to move. Most of them were Bavarians. Colonel Fairholme speaks German like a native. He talked with these chaps, and there was some interesting conversation. They were all without enthusiasm for the war, and all expressed indignation at having been brought out of the country, maintaining that the Landsturm cannot be used for anything except the maintenance of order in the Empire. I think they are wrong about that, but this was no joint debate on German law, and no attempt was made to sooth their injured feelings. A lot of men were brought in while we were there, some of them prisoners taken during the fighting, but a great many of them fugitives who were sick of the war, and only asked to get off with a whole skin.

As they marched out of the hall, the King came in from the field for a look at the morning's telegrams. He had been out since long before daybreak, and was covered with rain and mud. He shook himself vigorously, spraying everybody with raindrops, and then stopped to speak to us before going in for a cup of coffee and a look at the news.

From Malines we made back along the northern side of the canal, in an endeavour to find the headquarters of the ----th Division. We went through a little village where all the inhabitants were standing in the road, listening to the cannonading, and spun out upon an empty and suspiciously silent country road. A little way out we found a couple of dead horses which the thrifty peasants had already got out and skinned. I didn't like the looks of it, and in a minute the Colonel agreed that he thought it did not look like a road behind the lines, but our little staff officer was cock-sure that he knew just what he was talking about, and ordered the chauffeur to go ahead. Then we heard three sharp toots on the horn of the car behind--the signal to stop and wait. And it came pulling up alongside with an inquiry as to what we meant by "barging" along this sort of a road which likely as not would land us straight inside the enemy's lines. There was a spirited discussion as to whether we should go ahead or go back and strike over through Rymenam, when we heard a shell burst over the road about half a mile ahead, and then saw a motor filled with Belgian soldiers coming back toward us full tilt. The Colonel stopped them and learned that they had been out on a reconnaissance with a motor-cyclist to locate the German lines, which were found to be just beyond where the shell had burst, killing the motor-cyclist. It would have been a little too ignominious for us to have gone bowling straight into the lines and get taken prisoners. We turned around and left that road to return no more that way. We got about half-way up to Rymenam when we met some Belgian officers in a motor, who told us that a battery of the big French howitzers, which had just gone into action for the first time, were in a wood near H----. We turned around once more, and made for H---- by way of Malines. We found the headquarters of the ----th Division, and went in and watched the news come in over the field telephone and telegraph, and by messengers on motor-cycles, bicycles and horses straight from the field. The headquarters was established in a little roadside inn about half a mile outside the town, and was as orderly as a bank. Officers sat at the various instruments and took notes of the different reports as they came in. Reports were discussed quickly but quietly, and orders sent out promptly but without confusion. The maps were kept up to the minute by changing the little flags to show the positions of the different troops right at the minute. There was telephone communication with the forts, and several times they were ordered to pour fire into a certain spot to cover an advance or a retreat of parts of the Belgian forces, and, at other times, to cease firing, so as to let Belgian troops cross or occupy the exact spot they had been bombarding. It was a wonderful sight to watch, and it was hard to realise that this was merely a highly scientific business of killing human beings on a large scale. It was so business-like and without animus, that to anyone not knowing the language or conditions, it might have passed as a busy day in a war office commissary when ordering supplies and giving orders for shipment.

Just outside the headquarters was one of the fine German kitchen wagons with two fine Norman horses which had pulled it all the way from Germany. It had been stationed in the grounds of a chateau not far away, and three men of its crew were hard at work getting a meal when a little Belgian soldier with two weeks' growth of beard waltzed into the garden, shot one of the men dead and captured the other two. He disarmed them, put ropes around their necks and drove the kitchen to headquarters in triumph. He was proud as punch of his exploit, and, for that matter, so was everybody else around the place.

In a field of turnips a couple of hundred yards away from the headquarters were the howitzers. There were three of them in a row with three ammunition wagons. They had been sent here only a few days ago, and they were promptly put into action. They were planted here, slightly inside the range of the guns from the outer forts, and were able to drop shells six miles from where we stood, or about five miles outside the range of the fort guns. They toss a shell about two feet long, filled with deadly white powder, six miles in ten seconds, and when the shell strikes anything, "it thoes rocks at yeh!" as the darkey said about our navy guns. The battery was planted down behind a little clump of pines, and was dropping shells into a little village where there was a considerable force of Germans about to be attacked. The Germans must have been puzzled by this development, for they had counted on being able to advance safely up to the range of the forts, feeling sure that the Belgians had no powerful field guns of this sort.

We were introduced to the officers commanding the battery, and watched their work for nearly two hours. One of the officers was Count Guy d'Oultremont, adjutant of the Court, whom I had known in Brussels. He was brown as a berry, had lost a lot of superfluous flesh, and was really a fine-looking man. He had been in Namur, and had got away with the Belgian troops who went out the back door into France and came home by ship.

After we had been watching a little while, an aeroplane came circling around, evidently to spot the place where these deadly cannon were. It cruised around for some time in vain, but finally crossed straight overhead. As soon as we were located, the machine darted away to spread the news, so that the big German guns could be trained on us and silence the battery; but the Belgians were Johnny-at-the-rat-hole again, and he was winged by rifle fire from a crowd of soldiers who were resting near the headquarters. They killed the observer and wounded the pilot himself, to say nothing of poking a hole in the oil tank. The machine volplaned to earth a few hundred yards from where we were, and the pilot was made prisoner. The machine was hauled back to the village and shipped on the first outgoing train to Antwerp as a trophy.

We were leaving the battery and were slipping and sliding through the cabbages on our way back to the road, when we met the King on foot, accompanied only by an aide-de-camp, coming in for a look at the big guns. He stopped and spoke to us and finally settled down for a real talk, evidently thinking that this was as good a time as any other he was likely to find in the immediate future.

After talking shop with the two colonels, he turned to me for the latest gossip. He asked me about the story that the German officers had drunk his wine at the Palace in Laeken. I told him that it was generally accepted in Brussels, and gave him my authority for the yarn. He chuckled a little and then said, in his quiet way, with a merry twinkle: "You know I never drink anything but water." He cogitated a minute and then, with an increased twinkle, he added: "And it was not very good wine!" He seemed to think that he had quite a joke on the Germans.