A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCES IN THE GREAT WAR
BY
LOUISE MACK
(Mrs. CREED)
AUTHOR OF "AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL IN LONDON"
_With 11 full-page Illustrations_
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN Ltd
1915
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. CROSSING THE CHANNEL
II. ON THE WAY TO ANTWERP
III. GERMANS ON THE LINE
IV. IN THE TRACK OF THE HUNS
V. AERSCHOT
VI. RETRIBUTION
VII. THEY WOULD NOT KILL THE COOK
VIII. "YOU'LL NEVER GET THERE"
IX. SETTING OUT ON THE GREAT ADVENTURE
X. FROM GHENT TO GRAMMONT
XI. BRABANT
XII. DRIVING EXTRAORDINARY
XIII. THE LUNCH AT ENGHIEN
XIV. WE MEET THE GREY-COATS
XV. FACE TO FACE WITH THE HUNS
XVI. A PRAYER FOR HIS SOUL
XVII. BRUSSELS
XVIII. BURGOMASTER MAX
XIX. HIS ARREST
XX. GENERAL THYS
XXI. HOW MAX HAS INFLUENCED BRUSSELS
XXII. UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION
XXIII. CHANSON TRISTE
XXIV. THE CULT OF THE BRUTE
XXV. DEATH IN LIFE
XXVI. THE RETURN FROM BRUSSELS
XXVII. "THE ENGLISH ARE COMING"
XXVIII. MONDAY
XXIX. TUESDAY
XXX. WEDNESDAY
XXXI. THE CITY IS SHELLED
XXXII. THURSDAY
XXXIII. THE ENDLESS DAY
XXXIV. I DECIDE TO STAY
XXXV. THE CITY SURRENDERS
XXXVI. A SOLITARY WALK
XXXVII. ENTER LES ALLEMANDS
XXXVIII. "MY SON!"
XXXIX. THE RECEPTION
XL. THE LAUGHTER OF BRUTES
XLI. TRAITORS
XLII. WHAT THE WAITING MAID SAW
XLIII. SATURDAY
XLIV. CAN I TRUST THEM?
XLV. A SAFE SHELTER
XLVI. THE FLIGHT INTO HOLLAND
XLVII. FRIENDLY HOLLAND
XLVIII. FRENCH COOKING IN WAR TIME
XLIX. THE FIGHT IN THE AIR
L. THE WAR BRIDE
LI. A LUCKY MEETING
LII. THE RAVENING WOLF
LIII. BACK TO LONDON
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece_
AN ORDER FROM THE BELGIAN WAR OFFICE
A FRIENDLY CHAT
PASSPORT FROM THE AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER
THE AMERICAN SAFEGUARD
A SPECIAL PERMIT
BELGIAN REFUGEES IN HOLLAND
THE DANISH DOCTOR'S NOTE
MY HOSTS IN HOLLAND
SOUP FOR THE REFUGEES
PERMIT TO DUNKIRK
SKETCH MAP OF BELGIUM
A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCES IN THE GREAT WAR
CHAPTER I
CROSSING THE CHANNEL
"What do you do for mines?"
I put the question to the dear old salt at Folkestone quay, as I am
waiting to go on board the boat for Belgium, this burning August night.
The dear old salt thinks hard for an answer, very hard indeed.
Then he scratches his head.
"There ain't none!" he makes reply.
All the same, in spite of the dear old salt, I feel rather creepy as the
boat starts off that hot summer night, and through the pitch-black
darkness we begin to plough our way to Ostend.
Over the dark waters the old English battleships send their vivid
flashes unceasingly, but it is not a comfortable feeling to think you
may be blown up at any minute, and I spend the hours on deck.
I notice our little fair-bearded Belgian captain is looking very sad and
dejected.
"They're saying in Belgium now that our poor soldiers are getting all
the brunt of it," he says despondently to a group of sympathetic
War-Correspondents gathered round him on deck, chattering, and trying to
pick up bits of news.
"But that will all be made up," says Mr. Martin Donohue, the Australian
War-Correspondent, who is among the crowd. "All that you lose will be
given back to Belgium before long."
"_But they cannot give us back our dead_," the little captain answers
dully.
And no one makes reply to that.
There is no reply to make.
It is four o'clock in the morning, instead of nine at night, when we get
to Ostend at last, and the first red gleams of sunrise are already
flashing in the east.
We leave the boat, cross the Customs, and, after much ringing, wake up
the Belgian page-boy at the Hotel. In we troop, two English nurses,
twenty War-Correspondents, and an "Australian Girl in Belgium."
Rooms are distributed to us, great white lofty rooms with private
bathrooms attached, very magnificent indeed.
Then, for a few hours we sleep, to be awakened by a gorgeous morning,
golden and glittering, that shews the sea a lovely blue, but a very sad
deserted town.
Poor Ostend!
Once she had been the very gayest of birds; but now her feathers are
stripped, she is bare and shivery. Her big, white, beautiful hotels
have dark blinds over all their windows. Her long line of blank, closed
fronts of houses and hotels seems to go on for miles. Just here and
there one is open. But for the most, everything is dead; and indeed, it
is almost impossible to recognise in this haunted place the most
brilliant seaside city in Europe.
It is only half-past seven; but all Ostend seems up and about as I enter
the big salon and order coffee and rolls.
Suddenly a noise is heard,--shouts, wheels, something indescribable.
Everyone jumps up and runs down the long white restaurant.
Out on the station we run, and just then a motor dashes past us, coming
right inside, under the station roof.
It is full of men.
And one is wounded.
My blood turns suddenly cold. I have never seen a wounded soldier
before. I remember quite well I said to myself, "Then it is true. I had
never really believed before!"
Now they are lifting him out, oh, so tenderly, these four other big,
burly Belgians, and they have laid him on a stretcher.
He lies there on his back. His face is quite red. He has a bald head. He
doesn't look a bit like my idea of a wounded soldier, and his expression
remains unchanged. It is still the quiet, stolid, patient Belgian look
that one sees in scores, in hundreds, all around.
And now they are carrying him tenderly on to the Red Cross ship drawn up
at the station pier, and after a while we all go back and try and finish
our coffee.
Barely have we sat down again before more shouts are heard.
Immediately, everybody is up and out on to the station, and another
motor car, full of soldiers, comes dashing in under the great glassed
roofs.
Excitement rises to fever heat now.
Out of the car is dragged a _German_.
And one can never forget one's first German. Never shall I forget that
wounded Uhlan! One of his hands is shot off, his face is black with
smoke and dirt and powder, across his cheek is a dark, heavy mark where
a Belgian had struck him for trying to throttle one of his captors in
the car.
He is a wretch, a brute. He has been caught with the Red Cross on one
arm, and a revolver in one pocket. But there is yet something cruelly
magnificent about the fellow, as he puts on that tremendous swagger, and
marches down the long platform between two lines of foes to meet his
fate.
As he passes very close to me, I look right into his face, and it is
imprinted on my memory for all time.
He is a big, typical Uhlan, with round close-cropped head, blue eyes,
arrogant lips, large ears, big and heavy of build. But what impresses
me is that he is no coward.
He knows his destiny. He will be shot for a certainty--shot for wearing
the Red Cross while carrying weapons. But he really is a splendid devil
as he goes strutting down the long platform between the gendarmes, all
alone among his enemies, alone in the last moments of his life. Then a
door opens. He passes in. The door shuts. He will be seen no more!
All is panic now. We know the truth. The Germans have made a sudden
sortie, and are attacking just at the edge of Ostend.
The gendarmes are fighting them, and are keeping them back.
Then a boy scout rushes in on a motor cycle, and asks for the Red Cross
to be sent out at once; and then and there it musters in the dining-room
of the Hotel, and rushes off in motor cars to the scene of action.
Then another car dashes in with another Uhlan, who has been shot in the
back.
And now I watch the Belgians lifting their enemy out. All look of fight
goes out of their faces, as they raise him just as gently, just as
tenderly as they have raised their own wounded man a few moments ago,
and carry him on to their Red Cross ship, just as carefully and
pitifully.
"Quick! Quick!" A War-Correspondent hastens up. "There's not a minute to
lose. The Kaiser has given orders that all English War-Correspondents
will be shot on sight. The Germans will be here any minute. They will
cut the telegraph wires, stop the boats, and shoot everyone connected
with a newspaper."
The prospect finally drives us, with a panic-stricken crowd, on to the
boat. And so, exactly six hours after we landed, we rush back again to
England. Among the crowd are Italians, Belgians, British and a couple of
Americans. An old Franciscan priest sits down, and philosophically tucks
into a hearty lunch. Belgian priests crouch about in attitudes of great
depression.
Poor priests!
They know how the Germans treat priests in this well-named "Holy War!"