It is difficult to say exactly when the Siege of Antwerp began. For
weeks we heard the distant boom of the guns steadily drawing nearer
day by day, and all night the sky was lit up by distant flashes. But so
peculiar was the position of Antwerp that it was not till the last ten
days that our life was seriously affected, and not till the very end that
communication with our friends and the getting of supplies became
difficult. Our first real domestic tragedy was the destruction of the
waterworks on the 30th of September. They lay just behind Waelhem,
some six miles south of Antwerp, and into them the Germans poured
from the other side of Malines a stream of 28-centimetre shells, with
the result that the great reservoir burst. Until one has had to do
without a water-supply in a large city it is impossible to realize to what
a degree we are dependent upon it. In Antwerp, fortunately, a water-
supply has been regarded as somewhat of an innovation, and almost
every house, in the better class quarters at least, has its own wells
and pumps. It was, however, the end of the summer, and the wells
were low; our own pumps would give us barely enough water for
drinking purposes. The authorities did all they could, and pumped up
water from the Scheldt for a few hours each day, enabling us, with
considerable difficulty, to keep the drainage system clear. But this
water was tidal and brackish, whilst as to the number of bacteria it
contained it was better not to inquire. We boiled and drank it when we
could get nothing else, but of all the nauseous draughts I have ever
consumed, not excluding certain hospital mixtures of high repute, tea
made with really salt water is the worst. Coffee was a little better,
though not much, and upon that we chiefly relied. But I really think
that that was one of the most unpleasant of our experiences. A more
serious matter from the point of view of our work was the absence of
water in the operating theatre. We stored it as well as we could in
jugs, but in a rush that was inadequate, and we began to realize what
the difficulties were with which surgeons had to contend in South
Africa.
We were really driven out of Antwerp at a very fortunate moment, and
I have often wondered what we should have done if we had stopped
there for another week. Such a very large proportion of the
inhabitants of Antwerp had already disappeared that there was never
any great shortage of supplies. Milk and butter were the first things to
go, and fresh vegetables followed soon after. It was always a mystery
to me that with the country in such a condition they went on for as
long as they did. The peasants must have worked their farms until
they were absolutely driven out, and indeed in our expeditions into
the country we often saw fields being ploughed and cattle being fed
when shells were falling only a few fields away. However, margarine
and condensed milk are not bad substitutes for the real articles, and
the supply of bread held out to the very end. A greater difficulty was
with our kitchen staff of Belgian women, for a good many of them took
fright and left us, and it was not at all easy to get their places filled.
As the week went on the pressure of the enemy became steadily
greater. On Tuesday, the 29th of September, the great fortress of
Wavre St. Catherine fell, blown up, it is believed, by the accidental
explosion of a shell inside the galleries. It had been seriously
battered by the big German howitzers, and it could not in any
case have held out for another day. But the results of the
explosion were terrible. Many of the wounded came to us,
and they were the worst cases we had so far seen.
On Thursday Fort Waelhem succumbed after a magnificent
resistance. The garrison held it until it was a mere heap of ruins, and,
indeed, they had the greatest difficulty in making their way out. I think
that there is very little doubt that the Germans were using against
these forts their largest guns, the great 42-centimetre howitzers. It is
known that two of these were brought northwards past Brussels after
the fall of Maubeuge, and a fragment which was given to us was
almost conclusive. It was brought to us one morning as an offering by
a grateful patient, and it came from the neighbourhood of Fort
Waelhem. It was a mass of polished steel two feet long, a foot wide,
and three inches thick, and it weighed about fifty pounds. It was very
irregular in shape, with edges sharp as razors, without a particle of
rust upon it. It had been picked up where it fell still hot, and it was by
far the finest fragment of shell I have ever seen. Alas we had to
leave it behind, and it lies buried in a back-garden beside our
hospital. Some day it will be dug up, and will be exhibited as
conclusive evidence that the Germans did use their big guns in
shelling the town.
The destruction produced by such a shell is almost past belief. I have
seen a large house struck by a single shell of a much smaller size
than this, and it simply crumpled up like a pack of cards. As a house it
disappeared, and all that was left was a heap of bricks and mortar.
When one considers that these guns have a range of some ten miles,
giving Mont Blanc considerable clearance on the way, and that one of
them out at Harrow could drop shells neatly into Charing Cross, some
idea of their power can be obtained.
Every day we had visits from the enemy's aeroplanes, dropping
bombs or literature, or merely giving the range of hospitals and other
suitable objectives to the German gunners. From the roof of the
hospital one could get a magnificent view of their evolutions, and a
few kindred spirits always made a rush for a door on to the roof, the
secret of which was carefully preserved, as the accommodation was
limited. It was a very pretty sight to watch the Taube soaring
overhead, followed by the puffs of smoke from the explosion of shells
fired from the forts. The puffs would come nearer and nearer as the
gunners found the range, until one felt that the next must bring the
Taube down. Then suddenly the airman would turn his machine off in
another direction, and the shells would fall wider than ever. One's
feelings were torn between admiration for the airman's daring and an
unholy desire to see him fall.
It was evident that Antwerp could not withstand much longer the
pressure of the enemy's guns, and we were not surprised when on
Friday we received an official notice from the British Consul-General,
Sir Cecil Herstlet, that the Government were about to leave for
Ostend, and advising all British subjects to leave by a boat which had
been provided for them on Saturday. On Saturday morning came an
order from the Belgian Army Medical Service instructing us to place
on tramcars all our wounded, and to send them to the railway station.
It appeared evident that Antwerp was to be evacuated, and we took
the order to clear out our wounded as an intimation that our services
would be no longer required. We got all our men ready for transport,
and proceeded to pack up the hospital. The tramcars arrived, and we
bade good-bye to our patients, and saw them off, some in ordinary
trams and some in specially equipped stretcher-cars. It was a dismal
scene.
The hall of the hospital was still covered with stretchers on which lay
patients waiting their turn for the cars to take them, and the whole
hospital was in process of being dismantled, when tramcars began to
arrive back from the station with the patients we had just packed off.
They told us that the whole of Antwerp was covered with tramloads of
wounded soldiers, that there were five thousand in the square in front
of the railway station, and that two trains had been provided to take
them away! It was evident that some extraordinary blunder had been
made; and while we were in doubt as to what to do, a second order
came to us cancelling entirely the evacuation order which we and all
the other hospitals in Antwerp had received a few hours before. It was
all so perplexing that we felt that the only satisfactory plan was to go
round to the British Consul and find out what it all meant. We came
back with the great news that British Marines were coming to hold
Antwerp. That was good enough for us. In less than an hour the
hospital was in working order again, and the patients were back in
their beds, and a more jubilant set of patients I have never seen. It
was the most joyful day in the history of the hospital, and if we had
had a case of champagne, it should have been opened. As it was, we
had to be content with salt coffee.
But there was one dreadful tragedy. Some of our patients had not
returned. In the confusion at the station one tramcar loaded with our
patients had been sent off to another hospital by mistake. And the
worst of it was that some of these were our favourite patients. There
was nothing for it but to start next morning and make a tour of the
hospitals in search of them. We were not long in finding them, for
most of them were in a large hospital close by. I do not think we shall
ever forget the reception we got when we found them. They had left
us on stretchers, but they tried to get out of bed to come away with
us, and one of them was a septic factured thigh with a hole in his leg
into which you could put your fist, and another had recently had a
serious abdominal operation.
They seized our hands and would scarcely let us go until we had
promised that as soon as we had arranged with the authorities they
should come back to our hospital. It was managed after a little
diplomacy, and they all came back next day, and we were again a
united family.