THE LOG OF A NONCOMBATANT
by Horace Green
Staff Correspondent of the New York Evening Post
Special Correspondent of the Boston Journal
1915
Preface
In the following pages the ego is thickly spread. Their publication is
the result of persuasion from many sources that, before returning to
the war zone, I should put into connected form my personal
experiences as correspondent during the first year of the War of
Nations. A few of these adventures were mentioned in news letters
from the Continent, where I limited myself so far as possible to
descriptions of armies at war and peoples in time of stress; but the
greater part of them were merely jotted down from time to time for my
own benefit in "The Log of a Noncombatant."
Contents
I. From Broadway To Ghent
II. The Second Bombardment Of Termonde
III. Captive
IV. A Clog Dance On The Scheldt
V. The Bombardment Of Antwerp
VI. The Surrender Of Antwerp
VII. Spying On Spies
VIII. The Sorrow Of The People
Appendix: Atrocities
The Log Of A Noncombatant
Chapter I
From Broadway To Ghent
When the war broke out in August, 1914, I was at work in the City
Room of the "New York Evening Post." One morning, during the first
week of activities, the copy boy handed me a telegram which was
signed "Luther, Boston," and contained the rather cryptic message:
--"How about this fight?"
It was some moments before I could recall the time, more than two
years before, when I had last seen the writer, Willard B. Luther,
Boston lawyer, devotee of some, and critic of many kinds of sport.
We had been sitting on that previous occasion--a crowd of college
fellows, including Luther and myself--in a certain room in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from the University in that
neighborhood where Luther had attended the Law School and the
rest of us, on our respective graduation days, had received valuable
pieces of parchment with the presidential signature attached. The
conversation had already run through the question of Votes for
Women, progressive politics, and prize-fights, and before the card
game began it had settled on the last-named, chiefly because of my
own vainglorious description of adventures at Reno, Nevada, at the
time of the Jeffries-Johnson battle for the heavyweight championship
of the world. I remember telling with some gusto of my first
newspaper interview--one with "Bob" Fitzsimmons, then the Old
Man of the ring, and "Gentleman" Jim Corbett, who was Jeffries'
trainer at Reno.
"I had always wanted to see that performance," said Luther, "and
would have gone in a flash if I could have got any one to make the
trip with me. But remember this fact: whenever the next big fight is
held I'm going with you." Later in the evening we shook hands on the
proposition.
At the time that Luther's telegram came I was planning to start for the
Continent as Staff Correspondent of the "New York Evening Post"
and Special Correspondent of the "Boston Journal." Remembering
that Cambridge agreement I immediately wired:--
"Yes. This fight will do."
So that is how it came to pass that Luther and myself boarded the
Campania together, landed in Liverpool, cast about for ways and
means of getting into the scrimmage, and for the first month and a
half of my four months of wandering on the Continent were brother
conspirators, until the duties of partnership called my friend home and
left me without a companion in adventure.
In London we absorbed to some extent a heavy British fog and to a
greater extent British public opinion. We marveled at the exterior calm
of a nation plunged in the greatest of wars, yet fighting, so it seemed
at the time, with its top hat on and its smile still undisturbed. Across
the English Channel three days later the Dutch steam packet
Princess Juliana carried us safely through mine fields and between
lanes of British torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers. We
landed on the Continent at Flushing. Thence we headed for The
Hague, Holland, the neutral gateway of northern Europe, where we
found the American Minister, Dr. Henry van Dyke, and his first
secretary, Marshall Langhorne, shouldering the work of the American
Legation in its chameleonesque capacity as bank, post-office,
detective bureau, bureau of information, charity organization, and one
might even say temporary home for the stranded travelers of every
rank and nation.
Antwerp, the temporary capital of Belgium, was at this time invested,
but not yet besieged, by the German army. On the south the city was
already cut off by several regiments of the Ninth and Tenth German
Army Corps under General von Boehn. The River Scheldt and the
Dutch border formed a wall on the north and west. It was to Antwerp,
therefore, that we determined to go. After listening to the usual flood
of warnings against entering the fighting zone, and drinking our fill of
stories of atrocity and hate which every refugee brought across the
border into Holland, we took a couple of reefs in our baggage, and,
hoisting our knapsacks, set our course for the temporary Belgian
capital. By rail we traveled south across the level fields and lush
green meadows of Holland, over bridges ready to be dynamited in
case of invasion, and through training camps of the 450,000 Dutch
soldiers then mobilized along the border. At a little town called
Eschen the train stopped because the Belgians had torn up the
tracks.
Seated on the cross-piece of a joggling two-wheeled ox cart, moving
at the rate of not more than four miles an hour, with a dumb
specimen for a driver, and a volume of Baedeker for interpreter and
guide, we got our first glimpse of the hideous thing called war.
Judging from the looks of the country and the burning villages, we
were on the heels of a devastating army. For three, four, and five
miles on either side of the road beautiful trees lay flat upon the
ground. It was not until we saw groups of Belgian soldiers tearing
down their own walls and hedges and applying match and gasolene
to those which still stood, that we realized that this was a case of
self-inflicted destruction. Farmhouses, stores, churches, old Belgian
mansions, and windmills were either in flames or smouldering ruins.
Where burning had not been sufficient, powder and dynamite had
been applied to destroy landmarks which for centuries had been the
country's pride. As far as the eye could reach the countryside was
flattened to a desert. It reminded me of the Salem fire, through which,
while the piles of debris were still smoking, I had been taken in the
"Boston Journal's" car. But instead of a single town, here for twenty
miles along lay stretched a smouldering waste. The devastation was
for the defensive purpose of giving an unobstructed view to the
cannon of Antwerp's outer fortifications, which on that side covered
one sector of the circle swept by her enormous guns. I should
hesitate to mention the millions of dollars of self-inflicted damage to
Antwerp's suburbs alone. Luther and I did not at the time have the
military password. So that first day was a specimen in the matter of
hold-ups and arrests. From the time that we started across the level
plains which approach the city until we got through the double sector
of forts, we were stopped, questioned, and searched by thirteen
different groups of soldiers. There were marry occasions where, after
one pair of stupid sentries had put us through the grill, a second pair,
watching from a distance of thirty yards or so, promptly repeated the
entire performance. As these fellows spoke only Flemish dialect, our
conversations were not particularly fluent. Frequently there gathered
around us a crowd of gaping peasants, and when the word
"Americaine" came out, there were "Oh's" and "Ah" of astonishment,
or as often, when our explanations were not believed, sibilant hisses
that shaped themselves into the menacing word "Spion." We had
been led to believe that sooner or later a wool-witted sentry would
shoot first and investigate later; but so far they had simply crossed
bayonets, or with their hands up and palms outward had signaled us
to halt.
Our experience that day, as later events proved, was not an
extraordinary occurrence for war-time, especially for those
endeavoring to gain entrance to an invested city. But as our first and
maiden adventure it somewhat shook our nerve. When the grilling
was over we felt about as guilty as any criminal who has been put
through the third degree as practiced in the old police department
days, and I had several times to look over my passport and letters of
credentials to persuade myself that I was really not a spy. Eventually
we were permitted to pass the gates of the Gare du Nord. Once
inside the city gates, we made our way into the Place Verte and went
directly to the Hotel St. Antoine, whose proprietor sent our names to
police headquarters. The St. Antoine was at that time the residence
of the diplomatic corps and the Belgian ministers of state, and was
fifty yards from the Royal Palace and across the street from
headquarters of the Belgian General Staff.
There is no need of describing in detail Antwerp at the time of my first
visit. One or two pictures will suffice to give a rough idea of its
existence up to the time of the bombardment. Try to imagine, for
example, going about your business in New York or Boston or Los
Angeles (of course Antwerp is smaller than these) when your country,
a territory perhaps the size of the New England States, was already
two thirds overrun, burnt, smashed, and conquered by a hostile
nation, whose forces were now within nineteen miles of the gates of
the capital. Imagine that nation's warriors in the act of crushing your
tiny army, whose remnants were already exhausted and on the verge
of despair. Then picture a quaint, sleepy city, with shadowy alleys and
twisting, gabled streets, in which every other store and house was
decorated with King Albert's picture or draped in the red, black, and
yellow banner of the country-a city whose atmosphere was charged
with fear and suspicion and excitement. Sometimes a crowd of a
thousand or two drew one toward the Central Station where
bedraggled refugee families, just arrived from Liege, Termonde,
Aerschot, and Malines, stood on street corner or wagon top and
thrilled the crowd with tales of atrocities and the story of their flight
from their burning homes to the south. Now and then the crowd
parted before the clanging bell of a Red Cross ambulance rushing its
load of bleeding bodies to the hospitals along the Place de Meir.
Nurses, male or female, clung to the ambulance steps. The first one I
saw made a vivid impression on me. She was an English-looking girl
in a new khaki skirt, supporting with one hand what was left of a
blood-dripping head,--the eyes and nose were shot away,--while
out of the other hand she ate with apparent relish a thick rye-bread
sandwich. Occasionally she waved remnants of the sandwich at the
gaping crowd. It struck me as a peculiarly unnecessary exhibition of
her callous fitness for the job of nurse.
During the daytime the ordinary things of life went on, for the good
burghers and shopkeepers went about their business as usual, and,
generally speaking, fought against fear as bravely as the soldiers in
the trenches stood up against the German howitzers. It was only after
dark (when martial law permitted no lights of any kind) that the city
seemed to shiver and suck in its breath; doors were barricaded, iron
shutters came down, and behind them the people talked in whispers.
Military autos, fresh from the firing line, groaned and sputtered at the
doorstep of the St. Antoine; soldiers with pocket lanterns stamped
about the streets. From sheer nervousness after a day of
confinement some citizens, in spite of warnings, groped about the
more important avenues at night. Picture yourself on Broadway or
Tremont Street, with not a light on the street gleaming from a window,
and walking up and down with one hand on your wallet and the other
in the pocket where your Colt automatic ought to be.
Such, very briefly, was the condition of Antwerp at the time when we
arrived. That very evening word came in that the Belgian forces,
which had been engaged with the enemy for five consecutive days of
severe fighting, had retired behind the southern ramparts of the city.
During the night the stream of incoming wounded confirmed the news
of battle. In the moonlight, and later in the gray dawn, I watched the
long lines of Belgian hounds, pulling their rapid-fire guns out toward
the trenches. Many times later I was destined to see them. They
made a picturesque and stimulating sight--those faithful dogs of war
--fettered and harnessed, their tongues hanging out as they lay
patiently beneath the gun trucks awaiting the order to go into action,
or, when the word had been given, trotted along the dusty roads,
each pair tugging to the battle front a lean, gray engine of destruction.
For our purpose the best approach to Brussels was by way of Ghent.
Luther pushed on ahead while I was finishing a story. The following
morning, shouldering my knapsack, which now contained an extra
supply of army rations, and carefully stuffing my different sets of
credentials in different pockets (one for Belgian, one for German, and
one for English consumption), I crossed the River Scheldt and made
a slow and tortuous railway journey to Ghent.
Ghent lies thirty miles west of Antwerp. The trip took seven hours.
During the course of it I passed north of the Belgian lines and through
the western sector of forts, that is to say, Fort St. Nicholas, Fort
Haesdonck, and Fort Tete de Flandre. It was the same road along
which Winston Churchill's English marines and the remnant of the
Belgian forces retreated after the fall of Antwerp.
Ghent resounded with praises of its American Vice-Consul, Julius
Van Hee, a hair-trigger politician and a live wire if there ever was one.
Van Hee, with his intimate knowledge of four languages and the
Yankee knack of being on the right spot at the right time, twice saved
blood-shed in the streets of Ghent and in one instance probably
prevented a repetition of the scenes at Louvain.
In Ghent I again found Luther, with a fine young rumor in his pocket
--a rumor which turned out to be correct--that six German spies were
to be executed next morning at sunrise. The place mentioned was
behind the museum in a public park.
"I suppose we'll take it in," said Luther.
"I don't know about that," I answered; adding that, although
executions might be part of the day's work for a war correspondent, I
drew the line at seeing my first murder before breakfast. The tip was
correct enough except that it mentioned the wrong park.
The following noon the Military Governor, according to regulations,
caused to be posted circulars announcing that the men had been put
to death; but at all events I am glad to say that at that early date I did
not have the experience of watching six blindfolded wretches backed
up against a wall, of seeing the officer drop his arm as a signal, and
of hearing the fatal crack of a dozen muskets, as the bodies
collapsed like a telescope, crumpled inward with the chin upon the
chest, and fell forward to the earth.