Louvain and Waterloo
The encounter with the French regiments was reassuring for the time;
but as I returned north of Wavre, it became again doubtful whether the
link had really been made. News of the steady flood of Germans pouring
by Diest upon Louvain met me near Brussels. To get an idea of the
relative pace of the German advance I determined to return that night
towards the Belgian left wing and discover for myself, if possible, the
chances of its holding out.
A few hours at Brussels about noon were enough to convince me that
it would be well now to keep outside and moving independently. The
atmosphere of calm which the admirable organisation of the town had
preserved so long, even in face of the near approach of the German
cavalry on the south-east, was beginning to break down. The mistaken
policy of silence was having its inevitable effect. For want of news,
rumour was spreading. The Germans were said to be twenty miles, fifteen
miles, ten miles away. Treat people as children, which has been the
policy of the authorities in this war, and you will force them in the
end to behave as children. If ever a population deserved to be taken
into confidence it was that of Brussels. But it was now being treated
with less and less trust every day. Papers were being suppressed;
official communications grew less frequent and more obviously doctored.
Our own authorities contributed by a curt request that all British
correspondents should be ejected. How undeserved this was I was able,
as not of the profession, to appreciate. In view of what was common
knowledge, as to plans, positions and news, among scores of British
correspondents in Brussels, their tact and loyalty were deserving of
high praise and increased rather than diminished confidence.
I moved my base, therefore, to Waterloo, to a friendly little hostelry
that had already proved useful on our long skirmishing runs. In
the late afternoon another excursion to the south-east left little
doubt that the main German advance was progressing on this northern
line. Reports of German cavalry met us in the villages. But what was
happening to the Allied armies? On the return I met, and followed for
some distance through the lanes, a regiment of French infantry, who
were making a forced march to join the Belgians. It hardly seemed
possible, therefore, that the evacuation rumours which I had heard in
Brussels could be true.
To help towards a solution I started again, this Wednesday evening,
towards Louvain, and ran through the town at dusk.
I had come to know Louvain very well, in the days of my interviews with
the Headquarter Staff. There was a little restaurant at the corner
of the odd-shaped "Place," facing the magnificent Hotel de Ville,
where I could watch the constant stream of cars and columns passing
in and out of the cordon that surrounded the church, which contained
the Commander-in-Chief, and sometimes even the King. Occasionally a
British Staff officer would cheer me with the sight of the well-known
uniform. There were always Belgian army surgeons, in the brown cap,
ready for a gossip, restless horses with unhandy recruit riders, for
amusement, and walks through the deserted picturesque streets, for a
change to the eye. In a week or so I got to know it well, its quaint
atmosphere of a mediæval university town charged with the restless
electricity of military occupation, the uneasy mystery of an uncertain
fate. And in another week or so--it was not.
I passed through it, or rather round it that evening for the last time;
past the lines of soldiers sleeping under the station shelters, and the
sentries with their handkerchief puggrees. I saw it only once again,
the next night, by the glare of a few burning houses on the outskirts,
beacons of the Belgian retreat and the German occupation.
Wednesday.
Beyond Louvain progress in the dark was very difficult. I failed to get
the news I sought, but I heard something of the enemy. I made my way
during the night down behind the Belgian lines at Geet Betz, with a
returning officer as guide.
Here the advanced German right wing, chiefly cavalry--Uhlans and
dragoons--has been trying to turn the Belgian left.
They have been repulsed once to-day in the attempt to cross the river,
and suffered enormously owing to their advance in column formation.
The Belgians, too, have suffered considerably from the mitrailleuse,
but have held their entrenchment with remarkable courage.
The Germans returned to the attack, and were expected to renew the
assault to-night.
It was too dark to see or be seen in the undulating fields, but voices
from the trenches and the movements of horses, and the occasional rush
of a military motor, acted as signs.
Taking the chance of something happening within hearing, I made myself
comfortable under some bushes near an open track leading through the
lines of entanglements--so far as they could be located. There was an
occasional sound of distant firing, outposts skirmishing; later in the
night a single whistle and the sound of wheels grinding on tracks. What
may have been a battery moved up on to a rise in the ground--seen as
a shadow--about a quarter of a mile to the south. Here they seemed to
stop, for there was silence again.
Another long wait, and then the sound of cantering horses--some four
or five--coming by the track from behind, inside the lines. Were they
friends?
They had passed me, and were in a line with the slight hill to the
south, when little sparks of flame--half a dozen or so--glinted for a
second out of the shadows.
There was the slight "phit" of bullets through the leaves, and then the
purr of a maxim. The canter broke into a sharp gallop down the track,
following upon a single shouted order.
Some heavier piece of ordnance coughed a short distance to the left. A
reply came from far in front. A rattle, or rather an uneasy stir and
crackle, like a wet bonfire, moved along the lines, and died away in
the dark to the south.
The sound of the horses' feet stopped--probably they had turned on to
softer field-mould. And then silence again.
But this time the sense of human presence stayed with me. The darkness
seemed strained and alive with tense expectancy.
The nights are short, and their cover shorter.
I had to be content with only the sound-picture of the night skirmish.
During the darkest hours before dawn we got back to Waterloo. On the
southern edge of the battlefield itself I lay in the open, waiting for
daylight, and listening for the sound of cannon commencing that should
declare whether the Allies had really advanced, and were occupying some
position that might still save Brussels and Belgium.
Waterloo, Thursday Morning.
A Shakespearean interlude this in the great Tragedy. Pistol, and
Bardolph--what you will: the old story of the talkative coward!
I have come up here, for the first hours of quiet in three weeks; to
escape from the constant excitement of wondering whether the next pair
of galloping lancers approaching across the fields are friend or
enemy; to avoid the agitated nerves of towns, where nine-tenths are
spending their time in trying to discover whether there is any truth or
personal bearing in what the last tenth lets them grudgingly know.
With all consideration for the necessity of secrecy, the thing is being
overdone. No one can be got to believe that there is really no war
going on; and for want of proper information imagination is beginning
to run riot and nerves to snap.
A little company of peasants, fine, independent, sturdy folk, now safe
behind the great lines of armies. A jolly company, full of joke and
laughter, but with an eye all the time on the distant hill of the great
battlefield.
And one stout, serious leader of the local Civil Guard, who spends each
night beside the lion on the mound. Not alone; for three blue-bloused
peasants with muskets wait at the other corners: a curious recall of
the Great Duke's statue at Hyde Park Corner!
The last time I was here the three, aided by four girls, with their
hair still down, from the farm, plotted against the braggart's peace.
He dare not climb the 100-foot mound alone in the dark. But he wanted
straw, for a warmer seat.
In his short absence the three others were hidden in a barn by the
girls. The door shut. In the dark, alone, the leader set out to climb
the mound, thinking they had gone on.
He talked loudly to himself. Then he began to call their names,
"Pierre! Jean! Georges!--GEORGES!" He reached the top to find himself
alone with the lion and the stars.
A wild yell: the two barrels discharged in panic: a head over heels
descent: and a huge roar of laughter from the men and girls who had
crept out into the road, prolonged till it became the hysteria of
overtried nerves.
Then, the growl of cannon in the far distance, and all suddenly were
silent.
Unwilling to precipitate, by my night attack, the arrangements of the
peasants for escaping by their windows if the wandering Uhlans arrive,
I have come down the battlefield to sleep, in a coat, under the stars.
The night is extraordinarily still. Twice the cannon have droned for a
short time far off. A nearer shot, that roused a momentary shouting and
movement in the sleeping village behind me, must have come from some
nervous or sleepy Civil Guard.
Earlier in the night there were lights winking far away, towards
Genappe; probably French contingents signalling.
And the meteors have been falling, criss and cross, in the summer warm
darkness, over the darker cloud above the waiting armies to the east.
1815; and what were the men then thinking who lay rolled up in their
cloaks to sleep their last night on the fields about me?
Ninety-nine years; and what are the still greater hosts of young and
old men thinking, as they lie in their coats watching those same stars,
only a few miles away from me, just behind that darker band of trees?
A century! And the only difference, that the one great army, that then
faced up these slopes against us, now lies protecting us; in its turn
ringing off a hostile army that then slept and stood with us as friends.
A century of progress! And what to show for it? The armies of four
nations slightly shifted in their relation to these great plains, like
spokes on a turning wheel.
Firing has recommenced, very faintly, in the distance. Not more
disturbing than the harsh cry of a night-jar in the wood beside me.
For these few hours the terrible, unreal atmosphere of war, when every
inch of earth threatens a surprise, and no moment seems real till it
is past, has been absent. Night, and the stars, and quiet, have seemed
like old friends, renewing a quiet of thought, restoring proportions.
I have been writing by the light of matches, under a coat.
Now the stir of wind before the dawn has passed. A few dogs are
barking. And a shout or two tells of the Civil Guard changing their
watchmen.
I can see to write in the grey dawn. Beyond my feet, out there on the
hills, brain and sinew are again alert, and plotting cunningly to kill.
How much of hope and life and promise may have ended in darkness before
the next night covers this sudden glow of sun?
The uncertain outlines of the Waterloo monuments, commemorating heroic
deeds of the past, in the grey half light have a sinister look. How
soon will the sordid squalor of these new fights be in its turn
converted into such memorials, to entrap new generations into dreaming
that there is glory in war?