She is not quite dead yet, however. Scalped, shattered, and burnt as she
is, she still holds a spark of life as long as we are there. This
charnel-house in which we are encamped, with its streets, which are
nothing but malodorous paths winding among corpses, heaps of broken
stone and brick, and craters opened by the Boche _marmites_, still beats
with life in its depths. Existence has become subterranean. Dixmude has
catacombs into which our men pour when they leave the trenches. And they
are not all soldiers who explore the recesses of these vaults and
cellars. The suspicious lights alluded to by Alfred de Nanteuil are not,
perhaps, always carried by pillagers. Mysteriously enough, one house in
the town has escaped the bombardment. It is the flour factory near the
bridge, and its cement platform still dominates the valley of the Yser.
The 42nd Division left us two of its batteries of 75's when it moved
off. That was something, of course, though not enough to make up for the
disablement of 58 out of the 72 guns we originally had for the defence
of our front. The only formidable guns we have are the heavy ones, but
they are without the mobility of the 75's. And now apparently our attack
on the Chateau of Woumen has disquieted the Germans, who are again in
force before Dixmude. The bombardment of the town and of the trenches
has recommenced, and last night we had to repulse a pretty lively attack
on our trenches at the cemetery. There is also pressure along the Eessen
road, with considerable losses at both points. A renewal of the attack
to-night seems probable. And our ranks are already thin![63]
"Mother," writes a Marine from Dixmude on November 7, "it is with my
cartridge belt on my back and sheltered from the German machine-guns
that I send you these few lines to say that my news is good, and that I
hope it is the same with you and the family. But, mother, I don't expect
that either you or the family will ever see me again. None of us will
come back. But I shall have given my life in doing my duty as a French
soldier-sailor. I have already had two bullets, one in the sleeve of my
great-coat, the other in my right cartridge case. The third will do
better."
On the same day another Marine writes home: "Out of our squad of 16, we
still have three left." However, the night of the 6th and the day which
followed were quiet enough. The disappointment caused by the failure of
our attack on the Chateau was already almost forgotten, and our hopes
were again rising.
"I think," wrote Alfred de Nanteuil, "that my company will not stir from
this for some time. I have to furnish reinforcing parties as they are
wanted, the rest of my men and myself staying in the trench, which we
are always improving. We have a farmhouse near by which allows us to eat
in comfort. And we have plenty of straw."
The general impression is that we are held from one end of the front to
the other. "Bombardment always and musketry, a siege war, in short. It
will come to an end some day. Meanwhile," says De Nanteuil, gaily, "our
spirits and health are good." But this very afternoon certain suspicious
movements were descried on the further bank of the Yser. As it was easy
to bombard this part of the hostile front, a gun was promptly trained in
that direction. Was it a decoy, or was some spy from behind sending
signals? The gun no sooner came into action than a German battery was
unmasked upon it, killing Captain Marcotte de Sainte-Marie, who was
controlling the fire.[64]
Thenceforward attacks never ceased. The night between the 7th and 8th
was nothing but a long series of attempts on our front, which were all
repulsed. They began again at daylight against the trenches at the
cemetery. There the enclosing wall had been battered down for some time
past by the German artillery. Through the loopholes in our parapets one
could see the wide stretch of beetroots on the edge of which we were
fighting, our backs to Dixmude. Away on the horizon the Chateau of
Woumen, on its solitary height, rose from the surrounding woods and
dominated the position. Little clouds of white smoke hung from the
trees, which seemed to be shedding down. In his invariable fashion, the
enemy was preparing his attacks by a systematic clearing of the ground;
shrapnel and _marmites_ were smashing the tombstones, decapitating the
crosses, breaking up the iron grilles, the crowns of _immortelles_, and
the coffins themselves. The Flemish subsoil is so permeable that coffins
are not sunk more than a couple of feet below the surface, so that
their occupants were strewn about in a frightful way. Several Marines
were wounded by splinters of bone from these mobilised corpses.... In
the fogs of Flanders, when the mystery of night and the great disc of
the moon added their phantasmagoria to the scene, all this surpassed in
_macabre_ horror the most ghastly inventions of romantic fiction and
legend. Familiar as our Bretons were with supernatural ideas, they
shivered at it all, and welcomed an attack as a relief from continual
nightmare.[65]
"Although we did not give way at all," writes a Marine, "we understood
that everyone was not made like ourselves and the Senegalese. We took
pity on the poor worn-out Belgians, who had come to the end of their
tether, especially their foot Chasseurs,[66] and we took their places in
the trenches. We had three _aviatiks_ continually hanging over us,[67]
at which we fired in vain. They returned every day at the same hour, as
surely as poverty to the world. As soon as they had gone back we knew
what to expect. Down came the _marmites_ on our devoted heads!"
And their music, compared to the gentle coughing of our little Belgian
guns! At last a dozen new 75's appeared on the scene and relieved these
poor asthmatics. They were distributed between Caeskerke and the Yser.
Our grim point was the cemetery. There one of our trenches had been
taken by the Germans, but a vigorous counter-attack, led by
Second-Lieutenant Melchior, soon turned them out. "Exasperated by so
many sterile efforts," writes Lieutenant A., "the enemy decided, on
November 10, to make a decisive stroke. Towards ten in the morning began
the most terrible bombardment the brigade had yet had to suffer. The
fire was very accurate, destroying the trenches and causing great
losses."[68] At 11 o'clock 12,000 Germans, Mausers at the charge,
advanced against Dixmude.[69]
This attack repeated the tactics of the early days of the siege. The
Germans came on in heavy masses, reinforced by fresh troops. They had
also learnt the weak points of their opponents. And yet it is not
certain that the attack would have succeeded had it not been for the
unexpected giving way of our positions on the Eessen road.[70] This was
the only part of the southern sector not defended by Marines. It must
have been entirely smashed up, with the Senegalese who flanked it on
both wings. As a fact, the enemy's fire was so intense along the whole
line and our reply so feeble, that Alfred de Nanteuil, who occupied a
trench in rear of the northern sector, had to withdraw his men behind a
haystack. "Impossible to lift one's nose above the ground," writes an
officer, "so thick and fast came the shells." The attacking column was
thus enabled to pass the canal at Handzaeme and to fall upon the flank
of the trenches occupied by the eleventh company. This company had been
engaging the batteries at Korteckeer and Kasterthoeck, on their left,
and a violent rifle and machine-gun fire from a group of farms higher up
the canal. What was left of it had barely time to fall back upon its
neighbours, the ninth and tenth companies. A hostile detachment,
creeping along the canal, had contrived to push as far as the command
post of the third battalion, taking possession on the way of Dr.
Guillet's ambulance, which had been established at the end of the Roman
bridge. Our trenches were not connected by telephone, and communications
had broken down. Four marines only, out of the 60 in the reserve of
Commander Rabot, succeeded in escaping. The sentry on the roof of the
farm in which they were waiting saw the enemy coming and gave the alarm:
"The Boches--quarter of a mile away!" "To arms!" shouted De Nanteuil.
"Into the trenches!"
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE HANDZAEME CANAL]
He himself went to an exposed point to observe the enemy. There a bullet
hit him in the neck, striking the spinal marrow. How his men contrived
to bring him off it is difficult to say. He remained conscious and had
no illusions as to his state. All his energy seemed concentrated on the
desire to die in France. He had his wish.[71]
Then came the final defeat. The lines on the Eessen road driven in, the
dyke pierced at the centre, the northern sector cut off from the south,
the German wave flowed over us. The enemy had penetrated to the heart of
our defence, and, being continuously reinforced, swept round our flanks
and took us in reverse. One after another our positions gave way.
Already the first fugitives were arriving before Dixmude.
"Where are you off to?" cries an officer as he bars the way to a sailor.
"Captain, a shell has smashed my rifle. Give me another, and I'll go
back."
They give him one, and he returns to the inferno. Another, wandering on
the field like a soul in torture, replies to the inquiry of an officer
that he is "looking for his company. There cannot be much of it left,
but," straightening himself, "that does not matter: _they_ shall not get
through!"[72]
And they do not get through. But it was too late to stop them from
entering Dixmude. Their musketry was all round us, a rifle behind every
heap of rubble, a machine-gun at every point of vantage. The sharp note
of the German trumpet sounded from every side. It is possible that a
certain number of the enemy who had lain hidden in the cellars of
Dixmude ever since the fighting on the 25th now came out of their earth
to add to the confusion. The truth of this will be known some day. We
were under fire in the town, outside the town, on the canal, on the
Yser. It was street fighting, with all its ambuscades and surprises.
What had become of the covering troops in the cemetery and on the Beerst
road? Of the reserve under Commander Rabot, driven from ditch to ditch,
its commander killed or missing,[73] only fifteen men were left. These
were rallied by Lieutenant Serieyx in a muddy ditch, where they fought
to the last man. Surrounded and disarmed, Serieyx and some others were
forced to act as a shield to the Germans who were advancing against the
junction of the canal and the Yser. "Abominable sight," says Lieutenant
A., "French prisoners compelled to march in front of Boches, who knelt
behind them and fired between their legs!" Our men beyond the Yser could
not reply.
"Call to them to surrender," ordered the German major to Serieyx.
"Why should you think they will surrender? There are ten thousand of
them!"[74]
There were really two hundred!
At this moment a sudden burst of fire on the right distracted the
enemy's attention. With a sign to the others, Serieyx, whose arm had
already been broken by a bullet, threw himself into the Yser, succeeded
in swimming across, and at once made his way to the Admiral to report
what was happening.
A counter-attack ordered by the officer in command of the defence and
led by Lieutenant d'Albia had covered his escape. The eighth company, in
reserve, reinforced by a section of the fifth company of the 2nd
Regiment, under Commander Mauros and Lieutenant Daniel, entrenched
itself behind the barricade at the level crossing on the Eessen
road.[75] On all the roads leading to the Yser, and especially at the
three bridges, sections strongly established themselves or helped to
consolidate sections already there. Would these dispositions, hastily
taken by Commandant Delage, be enough to save Dixmude? At most they
could only prolong the agony. Her hours were numbered. After having
driven its way through the hostile column which had reached the Yser,
Lieutenant d'Albia's section encountered more Germans debouching from
the Grand' Place and neighbouring streets. Germans and Frenchmen now
formed nothing but a mass of shouting men. They shot each other at close
quarters; they fought with their bayonets, their knives, their clubbed
rifles, and when these were broken, with their fists, with their feet,
even with their teeth. By three in the afternoon we had lost one half of
our men, killed, wounded, or prisoners. The German columns were still
pouring into Dixmude through the breaches in the defence. They pushed us
back to the bridges, which we still held, which we were indeed to hold
to the end. They were going to take Dixmude, but the little sailor was
right: they were not going to pass the Yser. One more attack was
organised to bring off the Mauros company, which was retiring under a
terrible fire. The remains of several sections were brought together,
and, led by their officers, they charged into the _melee_ in the
streets. One purple-faced, sweating Marine, who had seen his brother
fall, swore he would have the blood of twenty Boches. He went for them
with the bayonet, counting "One! two! three!" etc., till he had reached
twenty-two. After that he returned to his company, a madman.
But what could the finest heroism do against the swarms of men who
rose, as it were, from the earth as fast as they were crushed? "They are
like bugs," sighed a quartermaster, and night was coming on. Dixmude had
ceased to give signs of life. For six hours fighting had gone on over a
dismembered corpse. Not a gable, not a wall, was left standing, except
those of the flour factory. To hold these heaps of rubbish, which might
turn into a focus of infection, was not worth the little finger of one
of our men. At 5 o'clock in the evening, after blowing up the bridges
and the flour factory, the Admiral retired behind the Yser.[76]
"Dear mother," wrote a Marine a few days later from Audierne, "I have to
tell you that on the 10th of this month I was not cheering much at
Dixmude, for out of the whole of my company only 30 returned. I never
expected to come out, but with a stout heart I managed to get away. I
had a very bad time. Many of us had to swim to save ourselves." These,
no doubt, were the prisoners who had thrown themselves into the canal
with the heroic Serieyx.
All this time Lieutenant Cantener, who had taken command on the death of
his senior officer, had been maintaining himself on the Beerst road,
with three companies of Marines. At nightfall he had the
satisfaction--and the credit--of bringing nearly the whole of his
command safely into our lines. They had made their way by ditches full
of water and mud up to their waists. They were 450 in all--450 blocks of
mud--and they were not, as has been said, worn out and without arms and
equipment, but steadily marching in fours, bayonets fixed, and as calm
as on parade. They had their wounded in front, and each company had its
rear-guard.[77]
Too many of our men were left beneath the ruins of the town or in the
hands of the enemy, but they had not been vainly sacrificed.[78] After
losing some 10,000 men,[79] the Germans found themselves in possession
of a town reduced to mere heaps of rubbish with an impregnable line
beyond. Our reserve lines had become our front, well furnished with
heavy guns, and punctually supported by the inundation which stretched
its impassable defence both to north and south. The whole valley of the
Lower Yser had become a tideless sea, out into which stood Dixmude, like
a crumbling headland. In taking it the Germans had simply made
themselves masters of two _tetes de pont_. Even that is saying too much,
for we still commanded the place from the northern bank of the Yser, and
our artillery, under General Coffec, frustrated all attempts to organise
their capture. Meanwhile thousands of Germans, between the Yser and the
embankment of the Nieuport railway, watched with apprehension the water
rising about the mounds up which they had hauled their mortars and
machine-guns. In the immediate neighbourhood of Dixmude, where the
Admiral had caused the sluice at the sixteenth milestone to be blown
up,[80] a hostile column of some fifteen hundred men was overwhelmed by
the water together with the patch of raised ground on which it had taken
refuge.[81] A fresh inundation added greatly to the extent of the
floods, and practically reconstituted the old _schoore_ of Dixmude. All
danger of the enemy's making good the passage of the river had finally
passed away.
[Illustration: THE INUNDATION. OLD MILL AND FARMS ON THE YSER]