The Surrender Of Antwerp
As we left the British field hospital, on the Rue de Leopold, a shrieking
skyrocket whizzed by above us and buried its hissing head in the
river to the north. One or two more fell at a distance of several
hundred yards, and in the southern part of the city flames from
several houses shot up into the quiet, windless night.
The bombardment was on--the time was 12.07 Wednesday
midnight.
For a moment I did not realize that this was the beginning of the end
of Antwerp. I had heard so much gun-fire and seen so many bombs
dropping from aeroplanes that I did not fully appreciate the
significance of these shells. I scribbled a few notes in my diary,
unstrapped my money belt, and then picked out an empty bed at the
Queen's Hotel and tumbled in. I must have slept for six or seven
hours.
When I arose everything was quiet. The hotel was apparently
deserted. I remember being particularly irritated because there was
no one in the kitchen who would give me breakfast, so I made myself
some tea and then strolled into the street. It so happened that the
Germans had been pumping lead steadily into the city for six hours
and that this was the morning lull. The Germans are methodical in
everything. When they bombard a city they stop for breakfast.
As I walked down the Avenue de Keyser I thought at first it was
Sunday--or rather a year of Sundays all rolled into one. Overnight
the city had been transformed into a tomb. Shops were closed; iron
shutters were pulled down everywhere; trolley cars stood in the street
as they had been left. My own footsteps resounded fearfully on the
pavement, and I walked five blocks before I saw a human being.
I stopped at the American Consul's office on the Place de Meir, only
to find the place was locked. A frightened face behind the grating told
me that the consul had taken his wife to the country--good place to
be in, I thought.
Things began to seem lonely. I heard shells falling and saw flames in
the southern quarter of the city, and decided to go in that direction to
look up an American correspondent and two photographers who had
asked me to bunk with them in the cellar of a little abandoned house
at 74 Rue de Peage.
Turning down a little side street leading toward the Boulevard de
Leopold, I was greeted by a clap of thunder overhead. A shell
demolished a house across the street and about thirty yards down.
The concussion knocked over a couple of babies. I picked them up,
put them back in the doorway of the house where they seemed to belong,
saying over and over again mechanically, "There, there, don't cry.
There is nothing to be frightened about"; and then, just to show how
little I myself was frightened I began to run. I ran for all I was
worth. I ran right into the fire. The shells were falling fairly thick
on the Boulevard de Leopold; every two or three hundred yards a house
was partially destroyed; bricks and glass littered the pavement, and
occasionally, every quarter of a mile or so, I saw a figure skulking
along under the eaves of a building, crouching and ducking in time to
the nasty music of the shells. But I decided that the middle of the
street was the safest part.
When I had gone about a quarter of a mile I got my nerve again. I put
my hands in my pockets, lighted a cigarette, and was just saying to
myself, "This is pretty good fun, after all," when CRASH!! CRASH!! two,
or possibly three, shells, bursting in rapid succession, tore down
houses a hundred yards ahead of me. Then one struck in the street, and
jagged fragments of angry shrapnel skidded along the pavement like a
thrown stone skipping along the surface of the water. I was again
trembling all over.
Was the game worth the candle, I asked myself. "I've come three
thousand miles and overcome every obstacle just to get into this
horrible mess. If I get disfigured--no, I'd much rather be killed--will
it--"
"Crash!! Bang!!" went a monster shell as I turned the corner.
Two doors from the corner of a narrow street covered with bricks and
mortar fluttered a United States flag, and beneath it the door of 74
Rue de Peage. This place was later spoken of as "Thompson's fort,"
because Donald C. Thompson, a Kansas photographer, took
possession of it after the Belgian family fled, and plundered the
neighborhood for coffee, rolls, and meat, with which he stocked his
little cellar. The house next door had already been struck, and
shattered glass littered the pavement. The doorstep of 74 was
covered by a couple of mattresses and sand-bags. Beneath this, in a
dingy sort of coal-bin, heaped with straw, I found crouching the
tenants of "Thompson's fort."
Next to Berchem, the southern quarter of the city, where the
Germans were approaching, the Rue de Peage was the worst spot in
Antwerp. We sat for a time listening to the shells. There were here, in
addition to Thompson, Edwin Weigel, a Chicago photographer;
Edward Eyre Hunt, of "Collier's Weekly"; and the Dutch Vice-Consul.
We heard the distant resounding Boom ... Boom ... Boom ... ed ...
Boom ... Boom ... Boom.
An interval of perhaps a second's silence, then a faint moaning, a
crescendo wail, the whirr and rush of a snarling, shrieking skyrocket
overhead, and a crash, like all the thunders of the universe rolled into
one, when the shell struck, followed by the roar of falling brick as a
neighboring house came pouring into the street.
"Whee.....wheee.....Hi.....HIOU UIOUW," we heard. "Whee ...
whEEE ... whEEE ... UIOUW ... OUWW ... SSH ... SSHSHHH ...
BANG ... BANG!!!!!!"
"Whee.....wheee.....Hi.....HIOUUIOUW," we heard. "Whee ...
whEEE ... whEEE ... UIOUW... OUWW... SSH ... SSHSHHH... BANG...
BANG!!!!!!"
I tried to persuade the other fellows to come up to the Queen's Hotel
along the Scheldt waterfront on the northern side of the city, where I
was then encamped. It was a safer locality because the Germans
had not yet got the range of the northern end of the city. Weigel and
Thompson, having to look out for their kodaks and moving-picture
paraphernalia, decided to wait a while, as did Hunt. Hare, who came
in later, had two big kodaks which he wanted to get back to his room
in the Queen's. I offered to carry one of them for him.
We shook hands all around and one or two of us exchanged
messages to be taken back in case there was any trouble--that is to
say, in case, as seemed likely at the time, some of us should get out
alive and some should not. Hunt gave me a letter to his family, and
later, with watch in hand, started to walk around the burning city to
calculate the number of falling shells per minute! I slung Hare's kodak
over my shoulder and we started back, taking separate streets. It was
a dash of three quarters of a mile and nothing fell particularly close to
us, although the buildings on all sides were in flames. Near a pile of
discarded uniforms of the garde civique, I saw what was left of the
figure of a man with his insides oozing out, his eyes still open, staring
vacantly upwards, and all around him the horrible odor of decaying
horses. By this time I was calm and was getting quite accustomed to
the bursting of shells. I suppose I had been through my "baptism of
fire."
About half an hour later, when we were sitting in the Queen's,
Thompson, pale as a sheet, staggered into the deserted lobby closely
followed by Weigel and Hunt and the Dutch Vice-Consul, the latter
somewhat out of his head. Just after I left 74 Rue de Peage, a 32 cm.
shell burst on the roof, tearing off the two top floors of the house,
throwing Thompson's bed into the street, and setting the place on fire.
At sundown the house was in ashes. Somehow or other the men all
got out, rescuing a portion of their paraphernalia.
All Thursday afternoon the German Taubes circled above the city--
mostly along the waterfront. Below them puffed little clouds of smoke
where shells from the Belgian anti-aircraft guns were exploding. I
fancy the airmen were locating the pontoon bridge and signaling to
the Prussian battery commanders six miles away; but during
Wednesday and Thursday, when the crowds of refugees were
assembled on the waterfront, not a single bomb dropped among
them. A few shells, well placed, would have slaughtered them like
sheep. Before and during the bombardment I am quite certain that
the Germans intended to frighten, rather than injure, non-combatants.
Report to the contrary notwithstanding, it is equally true that, so far as
possible, the invaders kept to their promise to spare such buildings as
the Cathedral, the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, the Castle
Steen, and other historic landmarks.
The bombardment lasted forty hours. That night,--Thursday, October
8th,--the second and last night which the town held out, all of the
Americans who were left gathered at the Queen's. The firing by this
time was terrific. Except for the lurid glare of the burning buildings
which lit up the streets, the city was in total darkness. For weeks
martial law had been in effect and there were no lights after sundown.
An unearthly feeling it was, to be locked in the darkness of this
strange city, unable to speak a word of the language, not knowing
whether the garrison had evacuated the forts or whether the city had
been surrendered, believing there would be street righting or an
insurrection of franc-tireurs. At times we heard through the darkness
the tramp of squads of soldiers. Surely, we thought, there come the
Germans. We remembered the atrocities at Louvain.
About an hour after darkness settled on us I climbed to the roof of the
Queen's Hotel, from which, for a few minutes, I looked out upon the
most horrible and at the same time the most gorgeous panorama that
I ever hope to see. The entire southern portion of the city appeared a
desolate ruin; whole streets were ablaze, and great sheets of fire rose
to the height of thirty or forty feet.
The night, like the preceding, was calm and quiet, without a breath of
wind. On all sides rose greedy tongues of flame which seemed to
thirst for things beyond their reach. Slowly and majestically the sparks
floated skyward; and every now and then, following the explosion of a
shell, a new burst of flame lighted up a section hitherto hidden in
darkness. The window panes of the houses still untouched flashed
the reflection in our eyes.
Even more glorious was the scene to the north. On the opposite side
of the Scheldt the oil tanks, the first objects to be set on fire by bombs
from the German Taubes, were blazing furiously and vomiting huge
volumes of oil-laden smoke. Looking over on this side of the river,
too, I could see the crackling wooden houses of the village of St.
Nicolas, lighting with their glow all of northern Antwerp and the
water-front. In the swampy meadows on the farther bank we could see the
frightened refugees as they hurried along the still protected road to
Ghent. They passed on our side of the burning village, not five
hundred yards away. Every now and then as a fitful flame lighted the
meadow I could see the figures silhouetted against the red
background.
They appeared to be actually walking through the flames like
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It was all a glorious and
fascinating nightmare.
There was at this time an ominous lull in the moaning pound of
shrapnel.
Out of the darkness in the direction of West Antwerp came a new
sound-the low methodical beat of feet. The noise became gradually
louder and louder until one could hear the rumble of heavy wheels
and distinguish the sound of voices above the crowd. This was the
beginning of the British and Belgian retreat, which started at about
eight o'clock Thursday night, and, under cover of darkness, continued
unbroken for eight hours. Following the line taken by the escaping
populace this retreat went past our position on the water-front. Before
dawn on Friday morning, when the light became strong enough for
the advancing army to make out the enemy's position, practically the
entire Belgian army plus ten thousand Royal British Naval Marines
had got across the pontoon bridge and were well along the road to
Ghent. During all these hours squads of gendarmes with fixed
bayonets held back such remaining townsfolk as attempted to get
near the bridge. To these wretches it seemed that their last avenue of
escape had been cut off. There were now at the Queen's, Arthur
Ruhl, Hare, and myself, in addition to an English intelligence officer
and the recruits from "Fort Thompson." We talked over our plans for
the next day. The intelligence officer volunteered to get up with me at
sunrise and scour the river for a barge. It was my idea, in case we
could make any kind of arrangements for a get-away, to come back
and report to the other fellows. I remember that Arthur Ruhl was
uncertain as to whether he would come with us or wait for the
German entry. He was worried about some friends in the British field
hospital, and he decided not to leave without looking them up,--a
pretty white thing to do, it seemed to me.
I tried to sleep, but the rumble of artillery wagons and shouts of the
marchers prevented. So I spent most of the night of the British and
Belgian retreat beneath my window. At daybreak the intelligence
officer came to my room and we started out along the water-front,
moving in the direction of the Dutch border. With the rising sun on
Friday morning the German Taubes again swept over the city. When
the Germans saw that the whole British and Belgian army had got
away from them they moved up their 42 cm. guns and literally gave
us hell. This time they had no mercy on the few remaining
noncombatants.
The intelligence officer's baggage delayed us a long time. When we
got up nearly as far as Fort St. Philippe, we separated. We saw a
barge anchored in the river and he had an idea it would leave about
seven o'clock, and that we might be able to get on it. I gave him my
knapsack containing my gold belt, which, in the confusion, I had not
had time to strap on, and started to make a dash back to the
Queen's, because I considered that I ought to let the other fellows
know what had happened to us.
I had fifteen minutes to cover the distance.
I ran. The shells, at that time, were falling at a rate, I should
judge, of five a minute. Opposite the Castle Steen I had a narrow
escape--just concussion, I suppose. Directly above me came a crash of
thunder. A few moments later I found myself lying in the street, head
pointing north--dazed. A bomb crashed through the eaves and tore a hole
as big as a small cellar in the street directly before the old castle,
bursting with the concussion of a tornado. For a few moments I sat on
the street feeling weak in the legs and unable to move.
Again I started back to the Queen's. Two hundred yards east of the
bridge some soldiers held me up.
"Get back!" they shouted, believing that I was making for the pontoon.
They turned me back, and I hesitated a moment. A terrible explosion,
louder than anything I had yet heard, rocked the city to its
foundations. For a moment the walls of the houses trembled and every
window on the waterfront was broken. The retreating Belgian army had
blown up that pontoon bridge and with it what then seemed the last hope
of escape for the few remaining survivors. For a few moments wreckage
writhed in midstream like a great sea creature in agony of death.
Past me rushed groups of Belgian soldiers, the remainder of a few
hundred who had been left to cover the British and Belgian retreat, fire
the last shots from the forts, and spike the guns as the Germans
approached. Pitiable was the terror of these fellows when they saw the
bridge gone. Many of them were out of their heads through exposure and
exhaustion; not a few of them wept. One sergeant tore off his uniform
and fatigue cap and tried to exchange them for my citizen's clothes.
The worst fire of the entire bombardment was concentrated during these
moments; the racket was stupendous. Because gunboats, barges, lighters,
tenders, rowboats, were commandeered by the military authorities to
ferry across soldiers and wounded there was slim chance for
noncombatants. Above the noise of bomb and shrapnel Belgian gunboats
added to the confusion by cannonading big boats along the quay. This
was done in order that the Germans might not make use of them for the
pursuit. It speaks volumes for my military knowledge that for a brief
moment I imagined the Germans had embarked upstream and were going to
make a river battle of it.
By this time the American correspondents had left the Queen's, going
in different directions for different purposes. Hunt and Thompson, I
later learned, went to the American Consulate, where they stayed
during the German entry.
For a moment I see-sawed up and down the river bank, remembering
I had left my handbag at the Queen's, but, infinitely more important,
that my knapsack with money belt and diary were in the keeping of a
peripatetic acquaintance somewhere along the crowded piers
downstream. Without that gold, the thousands of miles to New York
seemed doubly long. When I at last got back to the barge office a
dock-hand pointed to a bench in the corner; there to my intense relief
lay the knapsack, where my kind English intelligence officer had left it.
A little later I managed to clamber on a river barge laden nearly
to the sinking point with Antwerp's peaceful burghers and their
dumb-looking women and children. Slowly--very slowly--we steamed out
of the haze of powder and oil-laden smoke, through long lines of
gunboats and a flotilla of drifting scows packed to the gunwales like
our own, and past Fort St. Philippe, whose garrison were at that
moment heaving tons of powder into the river.
A few miles farther downstream they landed us on the northern bank
of the Scheldt near the little town of Liefkenshack. Here I began a few
miles of walking, occasionally varied by ox-cart locomotion.
I was traveling with nothing but a knapsack (my suitcase had to be
abandoned) and therefore moving faster than the crowd. At one
point, for the sake of company, I joined a group and took a turn at
shoving the family wheel-barrow. They poured out thanks in the
guttural Flemish tongue, then loaded me with bread and bits of
mouldy pie. When that was not accepted they feared for their
hospitality. They talked and I talked, with a result that was hardly
worth the effort. Finally, after a conference, one of the group
disappeared into the crowd and returned leading an eight-year-old
boy.
"Me talk American," said the boy. "We two speak together?"
And so we talked, for the road was long and weary.
Their advance was so gradual that, although I did not leave Antwerp
until the bombardment was over, I caught up with the army of
refugees before Roosendaal, just across the Dutch border.
Here Holland opened out her arms. The kindness of the Dutch--as
yet personal, unorganized endeavor--was beyond conception.
Churches, houses, public halls, stations were thrown open to the
multitude. You saw hundreds of Dutch soldiers join in the procession,
lift babies and bundles, and walk with them for miles. At Dordrecht,
when the trains came through, peasants passed scores of babies'
milk-bottles into the cars. When a jolly-looking Dutch girl, with a great
big gleaming smile that reminded me of some one, gave me milk and
chocolate, the tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I suppose it
was the reaction, or because I was tired, or, perhaps, because the
crowd was cheering and waving at us. For the others there were piles
of bread, Dutch cake, and, best of all, some good, long drinks of
water. For ten days Antwerp's water supply had been cut off. Von
Beseler, German siege commander, had seen to that.
At Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal people used the walls of the
houses for post-offices. They wrote their names in chalk letters, giving
directions to relatives lost in the scramble.
After ox carts, rowboats, and river barges had done their share, a
Dutch-Belgian "Stoom Tram" joggled us along for a few miles. Some
more walking and a little running before I at last crawled aboard a
twenty-car freight and passenger train moving slowly toward the east.
At the first telegraph office across the Dutch border, I filed a cable
story to the "Boston Journal"; and later started an account for the
"New York Evening Post." I had an idea that I would score a "beat" or
"scoop" so that the people of the Back Bay could read of Antwerp's
fall over their coffee-cups the next morning. My cable account had too
much inside information. There were in it too many facts concerning
Winston Churchill's visit, also information about the number of Royal
Marines engaged, none of which it was thought proper to give out at
that time. So the English censor refused to let it through. That,
however, did not prevent the Dutch Cable Company from pocketing
my two hundred guilders.
By the time I reached Rotterdam the word "refugee" had assumed a
new and altogether nearer meaning. I had been in a besieged and
captured city; I had mixed with homeless and starving people; I had
seen houses crumble and burn; and ghastly human figures with their
insides oozing away and the eyes staring vacantly.
As I lay in bed that night I could hear, and I still can hear, the scruff,
scruff, and shuffle of feet as the compact body of this army--the
army without guns or leaders--dragged slowly past my window at
the Queen's, the tinkle of ox-cart bells, the talk and babble of guttural
tongues; the curses of the team drivers, the frantic cries of mothers
who had lost their children in the scramble, the cries of young children
who didn't know what was wrong, but realized in their vague, childish
way that something terrible was happening.
I could see, and I still can see, those big Belgian hounds sniffing
along the outskirts of the crowd and plainly advertising for an owner; I
can see other hounds with their heads thrown back wailing at the
door of their deserted and abandoned homes. And I can see the
Dutch border where Holland opened out her arms, and the Dutch
peasants gave us rye bread and sandwiches and good long drinks of
welcome milk.
Sometimes I can sit with my legs dangling over the stern of that old
towboat barge on which I finally made my escape, and can visualize
the blue-gray spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, standing, it
seemed to me, a quiet sentinel over the ruins of the tortured city; and,
then, as the old barge sweeps around the river's bend, I can look
back upon the last of Antwerp's story written in flaming letters of red
against the early morning sky.