The Last of Brussels. The Flight, and the Flood
Thursday saw the ending of doubt. Although we did not know it, the
floodgates were already opening; the Belgian army was retiring upon
Antwerp, fighting only a gallant rearguard action at Louvain. The
French advanced force, with its tentative claw outstretched towards
Louvain, was beginning to wheel back rapidly to avoid leaving its flank
exposed. Brussels was uncovered; and through the opening between the
armies the torrent of grey troops was beginning to pour.
With the first light we made a circle towards Sombreffe, and came
upon some retiring French cavalry. It was a puzzling spectacle, as at
Waterloo we had not yet heard of the rapid change in the situation.
Thursday, Wavre.
It should have been a quiet day. A quiet wandering through picturesque
lanes, well behind the supposed fighting lines of the armies.
Running up and down the wooded, sunny lanes, on the stone setts, we
even came as a relief to the bored peasant guards, lounging in their
blue blouses, under straw shelters. At one remote village, high
placed and only seemingly attainable by cobbled steep lanes, the
Burgomaster made a solemn procession down the steps, with all the civic
dignitaries, to meet us. They may have been waiting in session for a
passer-by since the war began!
So we came down to Wavre; a short time ago filled with troops, now only
empty, with an uneasy crowd at the corners, and a shifting swarm at the
Mayoralty. We passed cheerfully out on the big, shaded road to Namur,
confident of good passage.
The feeling changed, in the odd way it does in the most peaceful
scenery when the war atmosphere touches it. The instinct for it is a
valuable one in roving in "open" territory. With a rush down the road
came a cyclist, wearing a tweed cap. Behind him, 300 yards off, from
behind the trees, stepped a grey-uniformed Uhlan officer, who examined
us through his glasses. The cyclist shouted, "There are seventeen up
there behind the trees. I bade them good morning, and they didn't
answer; so I said it was hot, and the officer said, 'Ouaai.' There's
a car just beyond with bullet-holes in it, empty by the road." Lèon
turned in a second on the broad road. The officer stepped back behind
the trees. A rifle bullet spattered on the macadam; and we careered
back to Wavre with the cyclist hanging on behind.
The news made little disturbance at the Mairie; orders had clearly been
given. The Civil Guards were shut up on the top of the Town-hall; and
all but the road-checks deprived of gun and sword. Six soldiers who
remained were despatched in a car in the opposite direction. For the
first time I began to realise that the country was to be evacuated--and
without warning!
The guns were booming steadily from the east, over Jodoigne. This was
our direction. We started out again; but we were hardly out of the
town, past some elaborate barriers, when straggling peasants began to
meet us, crying that the Prussians were close in the woods; cavalry had
been seen moving up the hills on either side.
It could scarcely be true; Wavre ought to be behind our lines, and
we ought to be all right. We went slowly along the road, to make our
peaceful character plain. I remember few more thrilling journeys
than the slow mile along under the woods, keeping civilian hat and
pipe prominent, and watching, without seeming to inspect, the close
impending line of woods above the road.
So we came to the next village, Gastouche. The peasants were trickling
out of the cottages, driving cattle hurriedly, dragging babies and
bundles. A few gallant Civil Guards, rather pallid, but full of spirit,
stood at the barriers. We ran gently through the village, reassuring
where we could, turned a wide corner, and there, sitting by the road,
leaning on their horses, were a squad of about twelve Uhlans! They
were some 200 yards off.
I could not make sure of the uniform for the moment; so, to cover
the retreat of the car, I walked a few paces towards them and looked
through the glasses. In reply, a Uhlan stepped out and lifted his. I
let him have a good look, to confirm my pacific appearance, and then
walked slowly back. The car was already out of sight, ready round the
corner. We swirled back through the village, hurrying the inhabitants.
Then, at the far end, leaving the car ready up a lane, we mounted a
bank, and watched the troop ride in, pull down the flag, and cut the
wires.
Picking up all the women we could, we were back in Wavre to give the
news. Nothing could be done. Not a friendly soldier seemed alive in the
neighbourhood. For a time we watched. With half a dozen anxious elders
I laboriously climbed the great church tower. We strained our eyes,
to see nothing real, but a lot of imaginary conflagrations. Meanwhile
the guns boomed far off, and the refugee villagers began to pour in
below us. A curious, pathetic sight. The women had put on their best
black dresses, to save them; the men, their black coats. Later, they
came in as they were, dragging and carrying children, women just from
or near childbirth, girls with scarfs full of food or apples. They were
frightened, hurrying, and quiet. But when the town at last understood
the rage of the men, and of the women too, is past description. There
was no outcry, but they cursed, clustering together, some of the men in
tears, at being deprived of arms, at not being allowed to defend their
homes--they, a horde of big men, against a handful. They were long past
reasoning with. It was a sane order that deprived even the Guards of
arms and shut them, chafing, behind the communal steps.
At last the sight of the refugees grew too painful. We went off to pick
up what we could. Twice we ran to the near end of Gastouche, bringing
back untidy loads of children and mothers. The second time we tried
to get through, by a corner, a few miles further to Overrysche. We
had just passed the barrier of faggots and village carts, with two
nervous-bold Guards at the "present," when at the end of a short cross
lane through the cottages on the right I saw the flicker and movement
of horse soldiers passing, sixty yards off.
The same instant a shot came from a cottage behind them, and a rush
of shrieking women down the lane. We turned at once and waited: the
Uhlans, some eight of them, had wheeled back out of sight, where the
cottages ran into the wood. The men shouted to the women to keep
indoors; a few stray children ran back and forwards in the lane,
crying. Then the door of a far cottage opened, and the crippled soldier
who had fired the shot was half-carried out. A fine red-bearded fellow.
He was perspiring, inarticulate with rage at having missed and with the
lust of fighting. We shoved him into the car, with a few more women,
and got back to Wavre. As we passed, we saw some thirty of the Civic
Guard shut in a yard, down a lane, behind a wooden barrier.
Even the civic calm had begun to quiver. The surging, homeless crowd
of villagers were talking loudly at the corners; and every now and then
a farmer in shirtsleeves bicycled furiously in, to complain of a house
occupied or horses stolen. The German outposts were all round us, and
the place undefended.
The utterly helpless agitation of a population unable to do anything,
seeing itself, without an hour's notice from the authorities, forced
to surrender home after home, and forbidden to resist, was an
inexpressibly painful sight, and cannot occur often, even in war.
Undefended towns, when abandoned, generally have some warning. Here the
enemy dropped out of the sky in an hour; and the peasants looked round
to find their own army gone. There was not even the previous "working
up" of a losing fight.
A shout and a rush. A cyclist, red-flushed, raced into the square,
brandishing a Uhlan helmet, picked up--who knows where? Another greater
shouting and swarming, and two stout farmers rode in, leading four
splendid Uhlan horses, Irish-bred, and full of mettle. Where did they
come from? What did it all mean? Time may show.
Waterloo, Thursday night.
To-day's story is still unfinished.
As the day wore on at Wavre, it became clear that Brussels was to be
included in the general evacuation. The sound of the guns could be
followed, as the Belgians fell back towards Antwerp.
This was, then, no more a matter of "Uhlan-hunting," by withdrawal and
encircling movement. The Prussians had penetrated too far, by surprise
or with foreknowledge; the country was being evacuated.
The horses of Uhlans captured were fresh, signifying no lost or
wandering parties, but portions of a main column that had camped near.
The troops, also, which we had seen were behaving quietly, not in the
savage manner of the after-fight. They knew the country was clear of
soldiers, and could take their time. To this, probably, we owed our own
immunity at Gastouche. A column of some eight hundred horse could be
seen with the glass moving over the hills south of Wavre.
We heard that Louvain was being evacuated. About five o'clock we left
the Civil Guard behind their railings, helpless and furious, and
hurtled towards Brussels. To some twenty little patrols of cavalry and
cars we gave the news. Their faces told me it was not the unexpected.
Not a quiet run. Twice the distant "burr" of the aeroplanes, and we
identified the German "Taube" machines over the woods. We turned
east towards Jodoigne; to find the trenches empty, our army gone. An
armoured car, packed with German infantry, flashed through a cross-road
behind us. Once again a waving of arms checked us, and the peasants,
half fearful, half excited, warned us of a wood ahead; but we rushed it
without incident.
So back to Brussels--to the close gathering of restless crowds under
the lamps, the quick glance of suspicious eyes, and rumour, nervous,
whispered rumour.
The roads were crowded with fugitives with bundles, cows, and carts.
The suburbs hummed uneasily. The evening papers were just appearing,
announcing that "the situation is unchanged; the Germans are still
along the Meuse"; while every third man on the road had seen them
within fifteen miles, and the air had quivered with the approaching
guns all day!
The game of secrecy has been played too long. It has deceived nobody
and increased the unrest. It is to be hoped that the good sense of the
Belgians will forgive it, for the sake of its innocent purpose, when
the hour of triumphant return comes.
I left Brussels again late in the evening and worked down towards
Louvain, in the dark, meeting the last of the fugitive crowds and
the trains of wounded. Leaving the car securely hidden, by by-lanes
and cobble-ways I got forward, avoiding the flank of the retreating
Belgians, and making for the light of two burning cottages--my last
sight of Louvain.
A few small fights were still going on, as sound and sight indicated.
Covering parties of Belgians, in small numbers, were heroically
sacrificing themselves to protect the strategic retreat on its
northward wheel.
Below a slight field-slope, upon the crest of which the flash of
rifle fire and the long snake-rattle of the mitrailleuse showed where
some section was still making a last stand, I found a shelter. I had
made for the west of their certain line of retreat down the fields,
and hid uncomfortably in a ditch of bushes, which discovered itself,
accidentally and somewhat painfully, in the dark.
Clearly, only a few men were holding the trench above. The whistle
of shot, well overhead and to my left, was continuous. Soon there
was the buzz of a motor down an invisible lane below, and one of the
German cars, fitted with a mitrailleuse-wheel, got into position, to
begin raking them from the rear. By means of motors, in this flood of
advance, the Germans have moved up light guns and infantry at the speed
of cavalry.
A few scattered shots getting nearer told me that the men above me were
running back. One, blundering so that I could hear his feet, clearly
wounded, stopped running, as the sound showed, near me. I got him
after a time into the same ditch as myself. It ran along close to where
he fell.
Having cleared this corner, the Germans had evidently something better
to do. The firing above and below stopped. After a long wait I managed
to get the little trooper, one of a regiment I had chatted with last
week, down to an abandoned cottage in the lane below. Only an arm
wound; so I left him, bandaged, for the Red Cross to fetch in.
I got back slowly, keeping the line by the burning cottages. The
drive that followed will not easily be forgotten--at headlong speed
through awkward lanes. Only once--we were running without lights--did
a challenge stop us; but we chanced its being a friend, and only heard
the stray shot after us, in the dark.
Some day I may be able to write the story of the "audacious chauffeur."
He swept me thirty miles through the night with extraordinary nerve and
skill. Only one of several daring runs.
There was no rest this last night. It was clear Brussels would be
occupied in a few hours. In that event we were under promise to bring
out a certain frightened mother and her babies. The event had seemed
remote; but, like the tide on flat sands, while we watched the distant
edge of the sea, it was already up, round, and behind us.
We were already all but cut off, since Brussels must now in a few hours
cut the last of its communications.
Friday, Daylight.
Down the car went again at 3 a.m., while I tried to get some sleep. It
seemed only a moment later that there was shouting in the village, and
a rattle of wooden sabots passed under the window, running.
I looked out, under the cottage blind; and in a few minutes, through
the grey early light, two or three mounted, grey-shimmering Lancers
walked their horses down the street. It seemed as if they were
provoking the cottagers to fire at them. More probably they were
perfectly confident in the general evacuation of this district. There
were more, the women told me later, riding past outside the cottages.
It was an undignified time of waiting, with no chance of a fight.
Nothing to do but dress, smoke, and get the papers ready in case they
came in. The terrible "game" is so real, even for the non-fighter, that
their passing, and the quiet of the empty street that followed, brought
more relief than one cares usually to confess to.
Bruges, Friday noon.
It was no use trying to sleep there, with the nervous chatter beginning
of the women clustered under the windows, and with the chance of "more"
coming. The loan of a captured Uhlan horse, a trophy which the village
was now anxious to dispense with, and another lift from a car returning
for wounded, took me down again in the fields to the east of Brussels.
A different sight this morning. For the Prussians were already half-way
into Brussels, on a clear parade march. The squalor and horror of the
battlefields were behind them. They were flooding easily through open,
still country, with the surrender of the city already promised them.
The insane game of war was being played out with at least one cleanly,
if, for us, melancholy, move.
I got out short of Cortinbeck. A few casual cyclists gave me confidence
to wait. The roads were moving in the distance with advancing cavalry.
I could see, with the glasses, more crossing the sky line. It seemed
better to avoid, on the return, some dusty advance party patrols, in
cars; but they appeared to be paying civilian casuals little attention.
When I regained the outskirts of Brussels the entanglements of wire
and the barriers of omnibuses were being cleared away--that pleasantly
reassuring joke--and the arms of the Civil Guard were being piled by
the streets. Zealous, honest Dogberries! It seemed hard that, after
being a conscientious and needful nuisance to their friends for so
long, they should not be allowed to challenge or scrutinise even one
enemy!
I did not wait to see the entry into Brussels. There are limits to the
passive endurance even of a non-combatant. The only triumphant entry
I shall willingly witness is the return there of the brown, tired,
gay-hearted little Belgian soldiers, whom I have learned to admire as
an army and sympathise with individually in their magnificent struggle
against odds.
The nature of our load made it wise to make a safe circuit west of
Brussels, on our retreat. The watching lion at Waterloo, as we passed,
seemed to wear a different look: surprised to see no battle array,
indignant at his desertion.
At first, by request, we did courier work, carrying the news to
isolated town-garrisons. The further we got, the less curious did the
people become for news. Resignation, apathy, stolid village optimism,
according to the locality.
Our armfulls of blue-eyed babies, five, six, and eight, brought the
only smiles to the faces we saw. The great mass of cars had already
gone; yesterday and before. A few hurrying cars, carts, and bicycles
with luggage. Now and again in a village the little crowds of peasant
fugitives with bundles. Occasionally some women, resting and cooking
by the wayside. The further down the line, the more troublesome
again became our familiar checks, the local watchmen, at their now
pathetically futile barriers. It would have been cruel to assure them,
when they became obstructive, that their authority was gone. We circled
by Waterloo westward, almost as far as Oudenarde.
At one village a swarm of little dark-eyed Flemings, in sabots,
pretended to shoot us with large bows and arrows made of half-hoops,
from behind a sham barrier of branches and wheel-barrows; a half-tragic
commentary. At Ghent our car was within a single word of being
"requisitioned." The babies fulfilled their object by capturing smiles
and safe passage.
At Bruges we have been kept for an hour because "German spies" have
been signalled as having passed in a car up the road. Having got so far
as to stop all the bridges, the dignitaries can do no more. The world
is upset, and must wait.
Ostend, Friday night.
The crowd of carts and cars that accumulated at last proved too much
even for the patience of the Gardes, and we all crushed through and
over.
Nowhere had the news been received; everywhere the blind is still kept
down. It is a dangerous game to play, with men raging as I have heard
them the last few days. But the result may justify it.
It is no good recalling the shadow moments of pain and tragedy that
cover like a cloud even the small corner which one man may see of this
destruction and panic called war.
Every event is out of proportion, impossible. The dead body one
stumbles over is no more real or important than the bad-mannered
shop-keeper who is doing his best as a civic sentinel. One thinks of
nothing but the chance of the next fantastic incident; and if it comes
as a death or as a child crying, it seems equally serious, equally
foolish, equally without origin or relation to the next event.
In the course of these two days, started so peacefully, it will be seen
that we have been involved in the French retreat on the west, in the
Prussian flood and the dramatic evacuation in the centre, in a corner
of the last battle at Louvain, on the east, in the evening, the morning
entry of the enemy to occupy Brussels, and finally in the east of the
flight to the south. If we put the facts of the last few days together,
so far as we know them, without going outside official information,
this seems to be about the position:
The German northern army, profiting perhaps even more than we did by
the check at Liége, had two possible alternatives, supposing their
objective to be Brussels, and the "hole" on the frontier by Mons and
Charleroi. And Brussels was necessary, to re-affirm their credit in
Berlin.
The first alternative was through by Gembloux, Quatre Bras, and
Genappe, avoiding the forest of Soignes. This would have struck the
weak link between the French advanced force, in the neighbourhood of
Sombreffe, and the Belgian lines from Wavre to Diest.
The second was to push north, along the frontier, to Hasselt, and break
through the Belgian left before it could be reinforced by the French,
threatening both Antwerp and Brussels.
This was their choice. They were aware that the French could not push
up rapidly enough to establish the link firmly, or in great enough
numbers to be able to reinforce the menaced left wing.
The French, nevertheless, did some very fine marches in order to profit
by the splendid Belgian resistance at Liége and Haelen. But it was
too late for the change of plan. When I was among them, at Mazy and
Gembloux and Perwez, it seemed as if they were in time to force the
Germans to take the more southerly line, and face them and the Belgian
arc on their north. The Germans knew better. Under screen of their
scattered Uhlans, here and there all over the country, forcing the
Belgians, always in inferior numbers, to expand and contract as their
attacks were located, they moved a far larger force than was estimated
across the Meuse. Behind their pause at Liége they converted the
hastily mobilised inferior troops, whom the Belgians had learned to
despise, into the engine of magnificent equipment and pace that is now
launched across Belgium.
This has pushed rapidly north, by motor, ahead of the French; and by
sheer weight of numbers, hurling columns in mass, at great sacrifice of
life, has broken the Belgian left at Diest and Aerschot in the terrific
fights of the last two days.
The French made great efforts to get up, and actually got a certain
number by forced marches far enough to take the places of decimated
Belgian regiments in the line. But the smashing numbers and artillery
made the Belgian position, in its open trenches and entanglements on
easy country, impossible. Their left once turned, the small Belgian
army had no choice but to fall back on Malines and Antwerp. They had to
choose between defending Brussels, to keep the link with the French,
and covering Antwerp, which opened the road to Brussels. Antwerp was
obviously the more important, and better prepared for defence. Brussels
must have been destroyed in a siege, with immense loss of life to the
huge numbers who have swarmed into it.
Wavre and all the district where I was travelling to and fro yesterday
was therefore evacuated, as the Belgians retired north. Their
retirement compelled a synchronous falling back of the French upon the
Sambre, to protect their own left wing when the link with the Belgians
was broken.
The Germans obtained free passage both on the east and south to
Brussels. The rapidity of their progress is evidenced by the fact that
when I passed round west of Brussels to-day, advance cavalry patrols
were already reported in the neighbourhood of Oudenarde (about 35 miles
west of Brussels, towards Lille).
It will be seen that, on paper at least, the Belgian army is in no
pleasant position. If the Germans continue to press northward on their
left flank, the Belgians will constantly have to be wheeling to their
own left front, to face them on the east. They will be forced to
retreat until they rest upon Malines and Antwerp.
At the same time any small force of Germans left in Brussels is
largely out of the game. The Belgians threaten their northern
communications. The farther the Germans push north, to Ghent or Ostend,
the more danger that their lines can be cut. All depends whether this
German northern advance is merely an army of occupation, to subdue
Belgium, or the main army of advance upon France. In the latter case,
it will not now be stopped this side of the frontier.
Ostend, Saturday night.
To-day the German flood has advanced with extraordinary rapidity. The
Belgian army is for the moment off the board. At express speed and with
clockwork regularity the country is being occupied. We know now that
this must be the main army of attack.
Sweeping from the east by three routes, and through and past Brussels,
the main German advance has turned south-west. Passing close to
Waterloo and through Hal it is directed against the frontier between
Valenciennes and Maubeuge. A lighter cavalry column is passing further
north, as if towards Lille.
The main advance, since my encounter with it at Cortinbeck and at
Waterloo, on the morning after the battle of Louvain and Aerschot, it
has been impossible to follow. But to-day I took the region from the
French frontier, on the west of Brussels, with some idea of "beating
all the bounds" of what is left of our surrendered but unoccupied
country. For, with the exception of the section from Malines to
Antwerp, Belgium has been surrendered, the troops on the way have been
disbanded, and the Civic Guard has been discharged. At Alost yesterday
I met many of them, dismissed from Brussels, but still in uniform and
anxious for news. To-day I came across them again in Ghent, further
reduced and in mufti. In many cases their wives have insisted on
destroying their uniforms.
I looked forward to a restful day in the Flemish rural districts, with,
perhaps, some news of the French. I was tired of coming upon Uhlans
round corners. It is a peculiarly trying business, exploring for an
enemy, with no troops, no sound of guns, or the consequent rumours, to
warn beforehand of their proximity! It is even more disagreeable when
you have to lose your enemy again rather faster than you have found him!
The wandering about the fertile, remote province, with its long,
shaded, cobbled roads and low-cottaged, dusty villages, was a pleasant
change. In the morning the region was still entirely untouched by
the war. The dark-eyed children, with bleached blonde hair, in noisy
sabots, swarmed like puppies in the streets and about the car. The
Civil Guard were the only distraction. In the country fields they
generally could not read at all, and waved us on, blushing in their
blue blouses. In the small towns they could read "Vlamsch," but no
French, which irritated them. Often "Madame" had to be called in to
help, before the carts and ploughs were shoved aside. One old peasant
was particularly troublesome. He was both deaf and blind, and behind
his road-barrier of harrows he nursed a rusty bayonet dating from
Waterloo.
The only incidents of the early day were an agitated hay-cart that
upset upon us, and a line of retreating engines, at Ingelmunster,
which took the level crossing at the same moment as ourselves. "The
service is so disorganised," the station-master excused himself for our
scratched paint.
On the French frontier--near Poperinghe--we met our friends the French.
A cavalry contingent entertained us pleasantly at lunch round the
soup-pot. Satisfied of the safety of our western border, we turned
east, to cut across the noses of any advancing German columns. My
object was to discover if they were striking north to Ostend, or direct
west towards Lille, as well as south-west on their main line. Through
Ypres, Roulers, Vijve, and Deynze we ran to Ghent. The country was
still clear; the "war feeling" absent; but the Flemish are slow to
catch emotional infections.
In Ghent we met the news. The Germans had flooded incredibly swiftly
north. A column had in the morning reached Melle, just south of Ghent.
Reports of eye-witnesses of its passing put it at 70,000 cavalry.
Clearly it was a fair-sized and fast column.
I felt certain that it would turn west, and not continue north to
Ostend. It must form part of a quick cavalry turning movement to the
north of the main advance on the French and British position. We should
have time to make certain later in the day. Passing quickly through
Ghent, to avoid "requisitioning" of the car, we pushed out towards
Termonde, on the east, hoping to be able to make sure of the position
of the Belgian lines also, on their new arc of defence.
Warnings of "Uhlans" soon began to meet us in quick succession. We
touched the outposts of the Belgians, and having thus made secure of
our two frontiers, west and east, to avoid unnecessary risk we ran back
to Ghent. The Belgians are worn and have lost heavily. The troops do
not yet know where the British are. They were, consequently, difficult
to deal with.
Ghent was in the now familiar condition of crowd panic. The railway
communication had practically ceased. Disbanded soldiers were trying
to get away. The squares were crowded with anxious, waiting people;
the roads beginning to fill with the crowds of fugitives on foot
and in carts. While waiting for a few moments to talk to Belgian
friends--quickly made in time of war--occurred an unpleasing incident.
A corporal of the line, followed by three privates in uniform, suddenly
rushed across the square, their faces red and drawn with terror, and
demanded the car. The chauffeur, an old soldier, was at once involved
in fierce argument. My new-made friends faded away.
The crowd, simmering with panic and crying already of "treachery" and
"revolution," as the effect of the extent to which they have been kept
in ignorance of the military situation until too late, swarmed round in
an instant angrily.
At the words "Give it up or I fire," frantically shouted, I thought it
time to interfere. I had two bayonets at once thrust against my chest.
"Where do you wish to be taken, friend?" He growled the name of some
village on the French frontier. The position grew clearer. He was one
of the "disbanded" escaping to his home. There were many, all about us,
but in civilian clothes.
"I will take you, in uniform, to any place you choose at the front; but
no law compels me to carry fugitives." ("Fuyards" is much stronger.)
"Get into clothes like mine, and I'll drop you at any (_sacré_)
hiding-hole that suits you."
The effect on the crowd was electric. The soldiers faded; and we left,
after a proper interval, to let the crowd cool down.
Not a quarter of a mile to the west of Ghent, where the roads were
spotted with carts of escaping households, an enormous Franciscan monk
blocked the road, with uplifted cross. "Stop, and take us, in the name
of the Virgin." He was supporting two wounded soldiers. It appeared
that, in foolish panic, all the private hospitals had been emptied.
"_Sauve qui peut_" was the word. The sick and wounded soldiers, many
from Liége, dressed in any odd civilian clothes, were being turned out
on to the roads to find their way to remote homes.
We bundled them in; took them to the nearest railway line; flagged a
train at a level crossing, and sent them off, with breathless blessings
from the railway window. But the roads were full of them: men limping,
men almost crawling, without money, and with only the dangerous
soldier's "pass" to carry them to their villages, already held by the
enemy.
For many hours we had given up our purpose of localising the column,
and travel backwards and forwards over the province, scattering them
far and wide in remote villages, either to their wives, or often in the
care of kindly women, who would pretend to be their wives or mothers,
in safer places. The strange panic feeling had now spread wide.
Everywhere were the little swarms of subdued people, with puzzled,
sullen faces, seen in forlorn villages. The cottages were emptying,
shop-windows being hurriedly covered, and signs hastily painted out.
The Civil Guard, disbanded, were being confusedly shoved into civilian
dress by their terror-stricken wives and daughters.
Occasionally I had to sit and make explanatory conversations in
the market places to knots of depressed Flemish civic fathers, who
would otherwise have made even more difficulty about our frequent
journeyings. "Where are the English?" "Who has betrayed us?" "Why have
we been kept in the dark, and now find ourselves helpless?"--all of
them unanswerable questions.
It became peculiarly difficult to keep up such talk, when, later in the
day, every quarter-hour would come a rush of clogs down the street, and
the roar of "They're coming!" The elders melted miraculously, and I was
left in the empty street facing a row of half-filled beer glasses, and
the thought that it might be true this time.
Towards evening we ran into the French outposts again, at Ypres. They
are well over the frontier, and ready.
We turned north at last in the dark, realising that even in these few
hours the tide of Germans had almost cut us off, even from the coast.
No province was to be left us by the immense efficiency of the machine.
It was moving now over undefended country. It has been notably revised
since Liége.
But a cry from a dark group under the dark trees on a lonely twelve
miles of road again stopped us: "_Nous avons peur_" (we are afraid)
wailed sadly, as we shot past. Two wounded soldiers, with two children
who had been to visit them. They, like many others, were from the
heroic Liége forts. They would be safe at their homes in Courtrai. On
the road, wandering, as many more were, right across the German line of
advance, they were in considerable danger.
To run for Courtrai was to run from the French lines, directly at the
head of the probable German advance.
Peasants, however, assured us that nothing had been seen; and it would
complete our locating of the positions of all the armies in this corner
of the world, if we found trace of the enemy.
It was an exhilarating night run. Still the knots of folk at the
corners, but now even the children were silent.
We dropped them, our last load, at the cross road entering Courtrai.
The car was turned to come back; when, from far down the other branch,
towards Deynze, came the roar of a racing car at full speed, devouring
the silence. Half a mile off sounded a shot, and again two, nearer us,
a little later. We started to move, and in a few seconds a car with
three Belgians in uniform rushed past us. One lay back, and his arm was
being bound up by his companion. They shouted warning. "They are back
there: we have come over one." And again: "Look out! There are more in
front!"
We did our best to keep up with them--a rather wild race in the dark,
on roads straight but rough, for long black miles at a time. They drew
ahead, but this served also to draw the fire from us. Twice again a
shot sounded sharply in front. But we only had the half-gleam of the
lamps on a shadow-man and a frightened shadow-horse, when we, in turn,
passed the Uhlan patrols who had fired.
It was not worth continuing as far as the French lines, clearly the
object of the car ahead. We turned off on the first good diagonal to
the north. We had learned what we wished. These were the usual Uhlans
clearing the ground; ahead of an advance to the west; not for the
present to the north.
The return to Ostend all through the night was strange in its quieter
fashion. The Flemish peasant, once he is frightened or suspicious,
becomes a dangerous man. We had serious difficulties at infinite
numbers of barriers. And always the halt brought round a muttering,
shuffling swarm of hostile faces and voices. Along the roads we passed
small carts and wagons, creaking slowly with families of fugitives.
There was no reason for any one to fly in view of the general
surrender, but suspicion and panic were spreading, and stories of
German savagery wildly exaggerated and widely believed.
Occasionally the lights glanced off long lines of black-shawled women,
returning from night pilgrimages to more potent saints. In the middle
of long black stretches of lonely road we passed suddenly before open
shrines, blazing with votive tapers. Near big villages, in the larger
shrines the heads of many children were silhouetted sharply against the
dazzling altars. Generally a ring of kneeling women outside shut the
children in; and the momentary sound of chanting came and went as we
passed.
At a crossing a train, without lights, crept back timidly towards
Ghent. At another, seven trains in succession went past, full of
volunteers shipped to the French frontier. A car, with the windows
smashed by bullets, deserted under the trees, told of the passing of
more Uhlans. We half expected to find the Uhlans already here when we
returned; but it was only the exit of carts and carriages of luggage
that interrupted our race in, near midnight. We had started to define
the boundaries left to us, and before our return very little was left
us but the sea!
England, Sunday.
Arriving at midnight at Ostend, I found myself "almost the very last"
foreign inhabitant. The Uhlans had been reported at twenty miles; we
had seen them at thirty; they were expected at any hour. Of the method
of my leaving, and of the episode of the dramatic visit of the Fleet
the next day, the time has not yet come to write.
The placid river under Rochester Castle, two days later, in very
tranquil sunlight, is the last memory picture of this phase. The peace
atmosphere of England hit the senses like a thick, pleasant vapour.
The sensation was actually physical. I have experienced it again, at
every subsequent crossing in or out of the countries at war.