On October 25 (1914), we had not yet received any help from the
inundation. Our troops were in dire need of rest, and the enemy was
tightening his grip along the entire front. New reinforcements were
coming up to fill the gaps in his ranks; our scouts warned us that
fresh troops were marching upon Dixmude by the three roads of Essen,
Beerst, and Woumen.[11] We had to expect a big affair the next day, if
not that very night. It came off that night.
About 7 o'clock the Gamas company went to relieve the men in the
southern trenches. On their way, immediately outside the town, they
fell in with a German force of about the same strength as themselves,
which had crept up no one knew how. There was a fusillade and a general
_mêlée_, in which our sailors opened a passage through the troop with
bayonets and butt-ends, disposing of some forty Germans and putting the
rest to flight.[12] Then there was a lull. The splash of rain was the
only sound heard till 2 A.M., when suddenly a fresh outbreak
of rifle-fire was heard near the Caeskerke station, right inside the
defences. It was suggested that our men or our allies, exasperated by
their life of continual alarms, had been carried away by some reckless
impulse. The bravest soldiers admit that hallucinations are not
uncommon at night in the trenches. All the pitfalls of darkness rise
before the mind; the circulation of the blood makes a noise like the
tramp of marching troops; if by chance a nervous sentry should fire his
rifle, the whole section will follow suit.
Convinced that some misunderstanding of this kind had taken place,
the Staff, still quartered at the Caeskerke railway station, shouted
to the sections to cease firing. As, however, the fusillade continued
in the direction of the town, the Admiral sent one of his officers,
Lieutenant Durand-Gasselin, to reconnoiter. He got as far as the Yser
without finding the enemy; the fusillade had ceased; the roads were
clear. He set out on his way back to Caeskerke. On the road he passed
an ambulance belonging to the brigade going up towards Dixmude, which,
on being challenged, replied: "Rouge Croix." Rather surprised at this
inversion, he stopped the ambulance; it was full of Germans, who,
however, surrendered without offering any resistance. But this capture
suggested a new train of thought to the Staff: they were now certain
that there had been an infantry raid upon the town; the Germans in
the ambulance probably belonged to a troop of mysterious assailants
who had made their way into Dixmude in the night and had vanished no
less mysteriously after this extraordinary deed of daring. One of our
covering trenches must have given way, but which? Our allies held the
railway line by which the enemy had penetrated into the defences,
sounding the charge.... The riddle was very disturbing, but under the
veil of a thick, damp night, which favored the enemy, it was useless
to seek a solution. It was found next morning at dawn, when one of
our detachments on guard by the Yser suddenly noticed in a meadow a
curious medley of Belgians, French Marines, and Germans. Had our men
been made prisoners? This uncertainty was of brief duration. There was
a sharp volley; the sailors fell; the Germans made off. This was what
had happened!
Various versions have been given of this incident, one of the most
dramatic of the defence, in the course of which the heroic Commander
Jeanniot and Dr. Duguet, chief officer of the medical staff, fell
mortally wounded, with several others. The general opinion, however,
seems to be that the German attack, which was delivered at 2:30 P.M.,
was closely connected with the surprise movement attempted at 7 o'clock
in the evening on the Essen road and so happily frustrated by the
intervention of the Gamas company. It is not impossible that it was
carried out by the fragments of the force we had scattered, reinforced
by new elements and charging to the sound of the bugle. This would
explain the interval of several hours between the two attacks, which
were no doubt the outcome of a single inspiration.
"The night," says an eye-witness, "was pursuing its normal course,
and as there were no indications of disturbance, Dr. Duguet took the
opportunity to go and get a little rest in the house where he was
living, which was just across the street opposite his ambulance. The
Abbé Le Helloco, chaplain of the 2nd Regiment, had joined him at about
1:30 A.M. The latter admits that he was rather uneasy because
of the earlier skirmish, in which, as was his habit, he had been
unremitting in his ministrations to the wounded. After a few minutes'
talk the two men separated to seek their straw pallets. The Abbé had
been asleep for an hour or two, when he was awakened by shots close at
hand. He roused himself and went to Dr. Duguet, who was already up.
The two did not exchange a word. Simultaneously, without taking the
precaution of extinguishing the lights behind them, they hurried to the
street. Enframed by the lighted doorway, they at once became a target;
a volley brought them down in a moment. Dr. Duguet had been struck by a
bullet in the abdomen; the Abbé was hit in the head, the arm, and the
right thigh. The two bodies were touching each other. 'Abbé,' said Dr.
Duguet, 'we are done for. Give me absolution. I regret....' The Abbé
found strength to lift his heavy arm and to make the sign of the cross
upon his dying comrade. Then he fainted, and this saved him. Neither
he nor Dr. Duguet had understood for the moment what was happening.
Whence had the band of marauders who had struck them down come, and how
had they managed to steal into our lines without being seen? It was a
mystery. This fusillade breaking out behind them had caused a certain
disorder in the sections nearest to it, who thought they were being
taken in the rear, and who would have been, indeed, had the attack
been maintained. The band arrived in front of the ambulance station at
the moment when the staff (three Belgian doctors, a few naval hospital
orderlies, and Quartermaster Bonnet) were attending to Dr. Duguet, who
was still breathing. They made the whole lot prisoners and carried them
along in their idiotic rush through the streets. Both officers and
soldiers must have been drunk. This is the only reasonable explanation
of their mad venture. We held all the approaches to Dixmude; the brief
panic that took place in certain sections had been at once controlled."