In spite of the retreat of the enemy, the four companies of Marines had
been left at their posts as a precautionary measure. An intermittent
fusillade to the north of the Yser during the night suggested a renewed
offensive. The only attack of any moment took place at 3 o'clock in the
morning, "but we repulsed it easily," notes the Marine R., "for in our
covered trenches we are invulnerable." Disappointed, the enemy turned
again towards the town, which he began to bombard once more at dawn. It
chanced that the weather had cleared. The _schoore_ smiled; the larks
were singing; weary of lowing for their sheds, or already resigned to
their forsaken condition, the cattle were ruminating in the sun[38]: and
the interminable line of canals, the silvery surfaces of the
_watergands_, shone softly on the brown velvet of the marsh. The sky,
however, as says the Psalmist, armed itself with thunders and
lightnings. The bombardment became particularly violent in the
afternoon. "At given moments the whole town seemed about to crumble,"
writes an officer. "The Germans had first attacked it with 10-centimetre
guns, then with 15, and then with 21-centimetre; but as this was no
good, they determined to finish off these infernal sailors in grand
style with their 305 and 420-mm."[39] Our reserves in Dixmude were of
course sorely tried by this terrible fire, which it was difficult to
locate and still more difficult to silence with defective guns. To add
to the complexities of the situation, we learned suddenly that at 4
o'clock the enemy had taken one of the trenches on the outskirts to the
south of the town. Surprised by an attack in force, the Belgian section
which occupied it gave way after a spirited resistance, involving the
supporting section of Marines in their rear in their retreat. Only
Lieutenant Cayrol remained at his post, revolver in hand, to enable his
men to carry off the machine-guns.[40] Three companies at once crept
along towards the captured trenches after our guns had cleared the
approaches a little.
"We tried our hands as marksmen," writes one of the actors in this
scene, "and while the Boches were trying to re-form, before they had
recovered from their surprise, we fired into them at 50 metres, and then
charged them with the bayonet. You should have seen them run like hares,
throwing away their arms and all their equipment. What a raid it was,
five to six hundred dead and wounded and forty prisoners, among them
three officers! We reoccupied the trenches, and I spent the night in the
company of a dead Belgian and a wounded German, who, when he woke up,
exclaimed: 'Long live France!' lest we should run him through. When day
came, and we could behold our work ... (Here an interval. A shell burst
just over my head, smashed a rifle, and threw a handful of earth in my
face. It was slightly unpleasant. I continue.) It was a pretty sight.
All day long stretcher-bearers were picking up the dead and wounded,
while we continued to fire from time to time. All the wounded we have
picked up are young men, sixteen to twenty years old, of the last levy.
"The next night there was a repetition of these experiences, only this
time it was the northern trenches that failed. As always, it was the
sailors who had to recapture them. For lack of available forces, we were
obliged to send two companies of the 2nd Regiment, which had been set
aside to act as reliefs; they put matters right by a little bayonet
play."
"You might have supposed that after this dance we had claims to a turn
at the buffet," writes a second quartermaster. "Not a bit of it! My
company had been set aside for relief, and it carried out the relief. It
would be untrue to say that we are not all a bit blown; but we are
holding out all the same. We called the roll; there were some who did
not answer to their names, and who will not see their mammies again....
If only we could move about a bit to stretch our legs! But we are packed
together in the mud like sardines in their oil. In the morning the
hurly-burly began again, first a few shrapnel, then from 12 to 1 a
perfect whirlwind of shells of every imaginable calibre. How they lavish
their munitions, the brutes!"
This defence of the Yser was, to quote the words of Dr. L., "an eternal
Penelope's web." Scarcely had it been mended, when the fabric gave way
at another point. Thanks to the reinforcements the enemy had received,
his pressure became more violent every day. Reduced to impotence on the
flank of the defence, where the vigorous attitude of our sailors deluded
him into the belief that he had to deal with superior numbers, the foe
pushed forward his centre. He succeeded in driving in a wedge on October
22,[41] occupying Tervaete and gaining a footing "for the first time on
the left bank of the Yser."[42] The 1st Belgian Division, thrown back,
but not broken, sent us word that it would attack next day, supported by
our artillery. We were further to send them one or two of our reserve
battalions. But the next day Dixmude and our outer trenches were so
furiously bombarded that we required our total strength to resist. The
Germans were evidently using their biggest calibres, 21 and perhaps
28-cm. In spite of all this, their infantry could not get into our
trenches. We had a few casualties, both killed and wounded, among the
latter Commander Delage, "Colonel" of the 2nd Regiment, who, when his
wound was dressed, would not stay in the ambulance, but resumed his
command before he was cured. But things had not been going so well with
our allies at Tervaete. Checked in a first attempt, a second and more
vigorous counter-attack succeeded in driving the Germans into the river
or upon the other bank; but this, as the _Courrier de l'Armee Belge_
admitted, "was a transitory success, for the same evening German
reinforcements renewed the attack, and carried Tervaete." Our artillery
had done its best under the circumstances; but, shouted down by the
clamour of the big German guns, it was not able to keep up the
conversation. "We still have nothing but the little Belgian guns," wrote
Second-Lieutenant M. on the morning of the 22nd. "However, we are
promised two batteries of short 155-mm. and two of long 120-mm. They
arrived in the course of the evening. That's all right! Now perhaps we
shall be able to have a little talk with the Boches!"
But was it not already too late? Dixmude was impregnable only so long as
it was not taken in the rear; and the enemy, having finally occupied
the whole of the Tervaete loop, was gradually penetrating into the
valley of the Yser. The last news was that he had arrived at
Stuyvekenskerke. The 42nd French Infantry Division, under General
Grossetti, which was to replace the 2nd Belgian Division, now reduced to
a fourth of its original strength, on the Yser, had not yet had time to
come up into line. At Dixmude itself the pressure was formidable; shells
were falling on us from every side, from Vladsloo, from Eessen, and from
Clercken, whither the Germans had removed their heavy artillery. And at
the same time the enemy's infantry attacked our trenches regularly at
intervals of an hour, with the stubbornness of a ram butting at an
obstacle, preceding every attack by a few big shells. It looked as if
they were trying to divert our attention, to prevent us from noticing
what was going on down below in the hollow of the Yser, where a grey
surge seemed to be seething, and where the _schoore_ appeared to be
moving towards Oud Stuyvekenskerke. But the movement had not escaped
the Admiral, who was watching it from Caeskerke. Whence had these troops
come--from Tervaete, from Stuyvekenskerke, or elsewhere? We could not
say, and it mattered little. At whatever point a breach had been made in
the defences of the Middle Yser, the German tide had crept up to us:
Dixmude was turned.
In this, the most critical situation in which the brigade had yet been
placed, the Admiral had only his reserves and a few Belgian contingents
at his disposal. To bar the way to the bridges of Dixmude, Commander
Rabot, with a battalion, hurried to the support of the left wing of the
front. Commander Jeanniot, with another battalion, crept up towards Oud
Stuyvekenskerke, to support the Belgians, having received orders to
occupy the outskirts at least. The manoeuvre was a peculiarly difficult
one to carry out, under a raking fire, and with men already dropping
with fatigue and perishing with cold and drowsiness. But these men were
sailors.
"On October 24," writes the Marine F., of the island of Sein, "we had
spent a day and a night in the first line. That night we had two men
killed in our trench and four wounded by a shell, and we were going to
the rear for a little well-earned rest. Scarcely had we swallowed our
coffee, when the order came to clear the decks, as we say on board ship,
and shoulder our knapsacks. When we got nearer, the bullets began to
whistle. We crawled on all fours over the exposed ground, without a
shred of cover. Those who ventured to raise their heads were at once
wounded, though we could see nothing of the Germans. We got so
accustomed to the bullets whizzing past our ears that we lost all fear
and advanced steadily."
That day, however, our worthy Marine got no further. In the thick of the
firing, a bullet broke his leg, and sent him rolling over into a pool.
But as he was a Breton, with a great respect for Madame Saint Anne of Le
Porzic, he made a vow that if he got off without further damage, he
would give her on the day of her "pardon" a fine white marble ex-voto,
with "Thanks to Saint Anne for having preserved me" engraved upon it.
All his comrades were not so fortunate, and at the close of the day the
majority of the officers engaged, notably those of the second and third
battalions of the 1st Regiment, were _hors de combat_. But we held the
outskirts of Oud Stuyvekenskerke; Commander Jeanniot and the Belgian
troops, with Commander Rabot, had succeeded, according to the Admiral's
instructions, in forming a line of defence facing north, which bid
defiance to the enemy's attacks. Moreover, heavy as our losses were,
they were nothing as compared with those of the Germans. The following
dispirited comments were found in the note-book of a German officer of
the 202nd Regiment of Infantry killed at Oud Stuyvekenskerke the
following day:--
"We are losing men on every hand, and our losses are out of all
proportion to the results obtained. Our guns do not succeed in silencing
the enemy's batteries; our infantry attacks are ineffectual: they only
lead to useless butchery. Our losses must be enormous. My colonel, my
major, and many other officers are dead or wounded. All our regiments
are mixed up together; the enemy's merciless fire enfilades us. They
have a great many _francs-tireurs_ with them."
_Francs-tireurs!_ We know what the Germans understand by this term,
which merely means skilled marksmen.[43] If our sailors had not been so
hitherto, the night attack which crowned this tragic day showed that
they had become so. The attack was unprecedented and of unparalleled
fury. Between 5 p.m. and midnight we and the Belgians had to repulse no
less than fifteen attacks on the south sector of the defence, and eleven
on the north and east sectors. The enemy charged with the cries of wild
beasts, and for the first time our men saw the brutish face of War. The
next day, as soon as the mists lifted, the battle began again along the
whole line. The town was bombarded, the outer trenches, the trenches of
the Yser, and, above all, the railway station at Caeskerke, where the
Admiral was. He had to resign himself to a change of quarters without
gaining much in the way of safety. The enemy had spies in Dixmude
itself. "The houses of the Staff were spotted one after the other as
soon as any change was made," writes an officer; "and every day at noon,
when we were at our midday meal, we were greeted by four big shells.
Scarcely had a heavy battery been in position for five minutes, when the
position became untenable: a man in a tree a hundred yards off was
quietly making signals."
In the north alone a certain relaxation of the enemy's pressure was
noted. Abandoning the attempt to turn Dixmude by way of Oud
Stuyvekenskerke, the Germans seemed anxious to push on to Pervyse and
Ramscappelle, from which they were only separated by the embankment of
the Nieuport railway. The Grossetti Division endeavoured to stop the way
with the remnant of the Belgian divisions, and sent a battalion of the
19th Chasseurs to relieve us at Oud Stuyvekenskerke. Commander Jeanniot
at once went into the reserve trenches of the sector. His men were
utterly worn out. The companies which had occupied the outer trenches of
the defence, and which had not been relieved for four days, were not
less exhausted. The enemy's fire on the Dixmude front never ceased, the
town heaved and shuddered at every blast, the paving stones were
dislodged, every window was shattered, houses were perpetually crumbling
into heaps of rubble, and after each explosion immense spirals of black
smoke rose as high as 100 metres above the craters made by the shells.
"During the night of Sunday, the 25th," notes the Marine R., on duty
with Commander Mauros, of the third battalion, "we were thrice obliged
to evacuate the houses in which we were, as they fell in upon us."
"Dixmude is gradually crumbling away," wrote Lieutenant S. on the
following day. The Carmelites had left on October 21; their monastery,
where the chaplains of the brigade[44] continued to officiate
imperturbably, had received three big shells during the day. The belfry
still held, but it had lost three of its turrets, and the charming
Gothic facade of the town-hall had a great hole in the first storey. It
looked like a piece of lace through which a clumsy fist had been thrust.
The enemy did not even spare our ambulances. "A chapel in the middle of
the town, protected by the Red Cross (Hospital of St. John), was shelled
from end to end," says Marine F. A., of Audierne; "not a single one of
the surrounding churches and belfries has been left standing."[45] The
worst of it was that our forces, greatly tried in the last encounters,
no longer sufficed for the exigencies of the defence. We had to be
making constant appeals to the depots. The winter rains had begun,
flooding the trenches. If it had not been for the heavy cloth overcoats
insisted on by a far-seeing administration, the men would have died of
cold. Many who through carelessness, or in the hurry of departure, had
left their bags at Saint-Denis, went shivering on guard in cotton vests,
their bare feet in ragged slippers. All their letters are full of
imprecations against the horrible water that was benumbing them,
diluting the clay, and encasing them in a shell of mud.
[Illustration: (Newspaper Illustrations)