On October 16, 1914, Dixmude (in Flemish Diksmuiden) numbered about
4,000 inhabitants. The _Guides_ call it "a pretty little town," but it
was scarcely more than a large village. "It is a kind of Pont-Labbe,"
wrote one of our sailors, but a Flemish Pont-Labbe, all bricks and
tiles, dotted with cafes and nunneries, clean, mystical, sensuous, and
charming, especially when the rain ceased for a while, and the old
houses, coloured bright green or yellow, smiled at the waters of the
canal behind their screen of ancient limes, under a clear sky. From the
four points of the horizon long lines of poplars advanced in procession
to the fine church of Saint Nicolas, the pride of the place. The
graceful fifteenth-century apse was justly praised; but after having
admired this, there were further beauties to enjoy in the interior,
which contained a good Jouvenet, Jordaens' _Adoration of the Magi_, a
well-proportioned font, and one of the most magnificent rood-screens of
West Flanders, the contemporary and rival of those of Folgoet and
Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.
[Illustration: THE PAPEGAEI INN
(From a picture by M. Leon Cassel)]
This stately church, the exquisite Grand' Place of the Hotel de Ville,
the "Roman" bridge of the canal of Handzaeme, the slender silhouette of
the Residencia (the house of the Spanish Governors), and five or six
other old-time dwellings, with crow-stepped or flexured gables, like the
hostelry of _Den Papegaei_ (The Parrot), which bore the date of its
foundations in huge figures upon its bulging front, hardly sufficed to
draw the cosmopolitan tourist tide towards Dixmude. Travellers neglected
it; historians ignored it. The capital of an essentially agricultural
district, at the confluence of two industries, and astride, so to speak,
upon the infinity of beetroot-fields and the infinity of meadows to
which the Yser serves as the line of demarcation, Dixmude showed a
certain animation only on market-days; then it appeared as the
metropolis of the vast flat district, streaked with canals and more
aquatic than terrestrial, where innumerable flocks and herds pastured
under the care of classic shepherds in loose grey coats. The salt
marsh-mutton of Dixmude and its butter, which was exported even to
England, were famous. A peaceful population, somewhat slow and stolid,
ruddy of complexion, husky and deliberate of speech, led lives made up
of hard work, religious observance, and sturdy drinking bouts in the
scattered farms about the town. The Flemish plains do not breed
dreamers. When, like those of Dixmude, such plains are amphibious, half
land, half water, they do not, as a rule, stimulate the fighting
instinct; their inhabitants are absorbed in domestic cares, battling
unceasingly for a livelihood with two rival elements.
Such were the only battles that they knew; no invader had ever ventured
among them. Invasion, indeed, seemed physically impossible. The whole
country between the hills of Cassel, Dixmude, and the line of sand-hills
along the coast is but a vast _schoore_, a huge polder snatched from
the sea, and almost entirely below the sea-level, owing to the deposits
of mud left high and dry on the shore. Down to the eleventh century it
was still a bay into which the _drakkars_ of the Norse pirates might
venture. If Dixmude, like Penmarc'h and Pont-Labbe, had retained its
maritime character, we might have found on the fronts of its riverside
houses the rusty iron rings to which barques were once moored. To
safeguard the tenure of this uncertain soil, slowly annexed by centuries
of effort, conquered, but not subdued, and always ready to revert to its
former state, it was not enough to thrust back the sea, which would have
overflowed it twice a day at high tide; it was further necessary to
drain off the fresh water, which streams down into it from the west and
the south, mainly from the stiff clay of the Dutch hills, floods the
meadows, cuts through the roads, and invades the villages. The struggle
is unintermittent. Such country, threatened on every side, is only
habitable by virtue of incessant precautions and watchfulness. The sea
is kept under control by Nieuport, with its formidable array of sluices,
locks, chambers, water-gates, and cranks; the fresh water, which oozes
out on every hand, spangling the rough homespun of the glebe with
diamond pools from the beginning of autumn to long after the end of
winter, is dealt with by a methodical and untiring system of drainage
directed, under State control, by associations of farmers and landowners
(_gardes wateringues_). Hence the innumerable cuttings (_watergands_)
along the hedges, the thousands of drains that chequer the soil, the
dykes, several metres high, which overhang the rivers--the Yser, the
Yperlee, the Kemmelbeck, the Berteartaart, the Vliet, and twenty other
unnamed streams of inoffensive aspect--which, when swelled by the autumn
rains, become foaming torrents rushing out upon the ancient _schoore_ of
Dixmude. The roads have to be raised very high in this boundless marsh
land, the depressed surface of which is broken only by sparse groups of
trees and the roofs of low-lying farms. They are few in number, only
just sufficient to ensure communication, and they require constant
repair. Torn up by shells and mined by the huge German explosives, the
"saucepans" (_marmites_) and "big niggers" (_gros noirs_), as the
sailors call them, our company of French and Belgian road-menders had to
work day and night throughout the operations to keep them open.
Other roads that meander across the plain are negligible. They are mere
tracks, most of which are obliterated when the subterranean waters rise
in the autumn. For in these regions the water is everywhere: in the air,
on the earth, and under the earth, where it appears barely a metre
beneath the surface as soon as the crust of soft clay that it raises in
blisters is lifted. It rains three days out of four here. Even the north
winds, which behead the meagre trees and lay them over in panic-stricken
attitudes, bring with them heavy clouds of cold rain gathered in
hyborean zones. And when the rain ceases, the mists rise from the
ground, white mists, almost solid, in which men and things take on a
ghostly aspect. Sometimes indeed the _schoore_ lights up between two
showers, like a tearful face trying to smile, but such good moments are
rare. This is the country of moisture, the kingdom of the waters, of
fresh water, that bugbear of sailors. And it was here that fate called
upon them to fight, to make their tremendous effort. For nearly four
weeks, from October 16 to November 10 (the date of the taking of
Dixmude), they, with their Admiral, clung desperately to their raft of
suffering at the entrance to the delta of marshes, watched over by
ancient windmills with shattered wings. One against six, without socks
and drawers, under incessant rain, and in mud more cruel than the
enemy's shells, they accomplished their task, barring the road to
Dunkirk, first ensuring the safety of the Belgian army and then enabling
our own Armies of the North to concentrate behind the Yser and dissipate
the shock of the enemy's attack. "At the beginning of October," says the
_Bulletin des Armees_ of November 25, 1914, which sums up the
situation very exactly, "the Belgian army quitted Antwerp too much
exhausted to take part in any movement.[23] The English were leaving the
Aisne for the north; General Castelnau's army had not advanced beyond
the south of Arras, and that of General Maudhuy was defending itself
from the south of Arras to the south of Lille. Further off we had
cavalry, Territorials, and Naval Fusiliers." For the moment at Dixmude,
the most exposed point of all, we had only the Fusiliers and a few
Belgian detachments, who were putting forth their remaining strength in
a supreme effort to co-operate in the defence.
[Illustration: THE BEGUINAGE AT DIXMUDE
(From a picture by M. Leon Cassel)]
The Admiral had said to them: "The task given to you is a solemn and a
dangerous one. All your courage is needed. Sacrifice yourselves to save
our left wing until reinforcements can come up. Try to hold out for at
least _four days_."[24]
At the end of a fortnight the reinforcements had not yet arrived, and
the Fusiliers were still "holding out." These men had no illusions as to
the fate awaiting them. They knew they were doomed, but they understood
the grandeur of their sacrifice. "The post of honour was given to us
sailors," wrote Fusilier P., of Audierne, on November 5; "we were to
hold that corner at all costs and to die rather than surrender. And
indeed we did stand firm, although we were only a handful of men against
a force six times as large as ours, with artillery." They numbered
exactly 6,000 sailors and 5,000 Belgians, under the command of Colonel
(acting General) Meiser, against three German army corps. Their
artillery was very insufficient, at least at the beginning. They had no
heavy guns and no air-planes,[25] nothing to give them information but
the reports of the Belgian cyclists and the approximate estimates of the
men in the trenches.
"How many of you were there?" asked a Prussian major who had been taken
prisoner, speaking the day after the fall of Dixmude. "Forty thousand,
at least!"
And when he heard that there had been only 6,000 sailors, he wept with
rage, muttering:
"Ah! if we had only known!"