At that same moment when Aimee had listened to the dread news over the
telephone, Edmond Valentin, in the uniform of a _sous-officier_ of
Chasseurs-a-pied, in his heavy dark-green overcoat and peaked shako,
with his bulging haversack upon his back, was kneeling in a hastily dug
trench firing steadily across the broad sunlit river, which lay deep in
its valley.
On the opposite bank ran the railway from Liege, across the Dutch
frontier to Maastricht, and from beyond the line there appeared all
along, for miles, light puffs of smoke which betrayed the position of
the enemy, who had crossed those picturesque green hills of the
frontier, and who were endeavouring to force a passage across the Meuse.
On the right, over the hills where the river wound, could be heard the
loud roar of the German guns which had been brought up against Liege,
while from the left came the eternal rattle of the machine-guns. In
that trench, before which the river and the canal ran parallel, the men
on either ride of Edmond uttered no word. They were silent, firing with
regularity, fascinated by the novel scene. Most of them had played the
war-game at the annual manoeuvres, when one stood up in trenches and
laughed in the face of blank cartridge. Yet here was real war. Already
more than one of their comrades had fallen on their faces struck by
German bullets, and not far away a shell had just burst behind one of
their machine-guns.
The din and rattle of it all struck a strange, uncanny note upon that
quiet countryside.
For nearly half an hour Edmond had been plugging away with his men, when
of a sudden a machine-gun section ran up close to them. Room was made
in the trench, and the gun, carried in parts by half a dozen sturdy
soldiers, was quickly assembled.
Then, the belt of cartridges having been adjusted, at the word of
command the terrible engine of destruction suddenly spat its hail of
death across the river.
The _onder-officier_ with the gun laughed gaily to Edmond, saying in
Flemish:
"Our friends yonder will not like this--eh?"
"_Oy hebt gelyk_," (you are right), laughed Edmond. "But see over
there! What is that smoke; there--away to the left?"
"That is Vise," was the reply, shouted above the rattle of the
machine-gun. "The enemy must have set the place on fire--the brutes!
Look?"
And as both watched they saw a great column of black smoke rising slowly
into the clear, cloudless sky.
"If they cross at the bridge there they will have the road open to them
to Tongres and St Trond--the main road to Brussels. I suppose we are
defending it," said the _onder-officier_, a man with a red moustache.
"_Ja_! Let's hope so," said Edmond, raising his Mauser rifle
mechanically again, and discharging the five cartridges from its
magazine.
At that instant the trench was suddenly swept by a perfect hail of lead
from across the river, while from over the heights beyond came a Taube
aeroplane, which noisily buzzed as it rose higher and higher, and then,
out of range, made a complete circle, in order to reconnoitre the
defenders' position. Dozens of men in the trenches raised their rifles
and fired at it. But it had already risen high out of harm's way, and
gaily it circled round and round over the line of the Meuse, noting all
the Belgian positions on the north bank of the river, and signalling to
the enemy from time to time.
The spot where Edmond was stationed with his regiment was situated about
eight miles from Liege, and one from Vise. Just to his right was a
bridge, which the Belgians had not destroyed, and which the enemy were
now protecting from destruction by means peculiar to the "blonde beasts"
of the Kaiser.
Placed upon it were two big furniture-vans, which had been hastily
daubed in the Belgian colours--red, black, and yellow. And these were
filled with Belgian soldiers, prisoners in German hands. By adopting
these dastardly methods, they knew that the defenders would not shell
the bridge and destroy it.
Edmond's regiment did not present any picture of uniformity. Some men
about him were dressed in the military fashion of thirty years ago--caps
with enormous peaks, and wide-flowing capes covering green and yellow
uniforms--while others, including himself, were in the dark-green modern
uniform which has lately been adopted, and had been served out to those
who had hurriedly rejoined the colours. While the enemy were all in the
new service kit of greenish-grey cloth, which at a distance was
exceedingly difficult to distinguish--with heavy leather boots reaching
half-way up their calves--the Belgians marched in garments of all
colours, from the sombre black of the carabineers to the bright
amaranthe and green of the Guides.
In war some curious sights are seen in the trenches. Close to where
Valentin was crouching there knelt a smart lancer, with a basket
containing carrier-pigeons strapped to his back like a knapsack. Amid
the roar and din the poor birds fluttered about restlessly inside their
_cage_, eager to escape to their homes. But if the brave little Belgian
nation lacked uniforms and accoutrements, it never lacked courage. All
was a hubbub of hope, and a talk of victory.
"_A bas les Alboches_!"
"_Vive la guerre_!" had been shouted from Ostend to Givet, and the
spirits of the nation--soldiers and civilians alike--were of the
highest, for now that England had declared war, Belgium was fighting the
battles of two great nations, France and Britain.
Both French and British soldiers would soon come to their aid, if they
could only hold out.
"They will never silence our forts at Liege," declared the lancer with
the pigeons. But just as he uttered the words, Edmond Valentin heard a
sound like the shrill yell of a small dog in the distance, and the next
second there occurred near them a terrific explosion.
The deadly German artillery were getting the range!
Again and again came the familiar yell, followed by the inevitable
crash. A dozen or so men were lying about him, shattered, dead, or
dying.
But the pom-pom continued to deal death, slackening only now and then
when a fresh belt was adjusted.
Adding to the roar of heavy guns, and quite close to them, lay the
hidden fort of Pontisse, while forts Barchon, Evegnee, and Fleron, on
the heists across the river, were thundering and dealing death in the
enemy's ranks. Behind them, to the left, lay three other forts--Liers,
Lanlin, and Loncin--defending the city of Liege, and forming a further
portion of the ring.
Time after time their huge guns roared, and the very earth quaked. Time
after time the enemy across the river were decimated by the terrible
fire.
Then, every now and then, the ear was deafened by the loud crackling of
musketry, which sounded like the loading of granite blocks into a cart.
They were of two pitches, the deeper from the rifles of the infantry,
and the sharper from the cavalry carbines. And above it all--above the
constant explosions of shrapnel--sounded the regular pom-pom-pom-pom,
steady as the tick of a rapid clockwork motor--adding to the deadly fire
now sweeping the valley for nearly twenty miles.
Edmond, quite cool and determined, lay there firing away in the
direction of the little puffs of grey smoke, which were hardly
distinguishable behind the distant railway line. It was his first
experience of being under fire, and after the first few minutes he grew
quite unconcerned, even though he saw that many of his comrades had,
alas! been bowled over. The primeval fury of the male beast bent on
fighting, which seizes every man who is called upon to defend his life,
had also seized him.
"They say that the French will be at Liege to-night," remarked the
_onder-officier_ with the red moustache, in charge of the machine-gun.
"If they are, we will teach those German brutes a lesson. We will--"
Next instant he reeled and fell forward upon his face. A bullet
entering his jaw had passed through his head, carrying with it a large
piece of his skull. Death had been instantaneous. With hope of victory
upon his lips the brave fellow had passed, in a single second, into that
land which lies beyond the human ken.
The four Chasseurs serving the gun stopped and turned him over, but saw
at once that he no longer lived.
A few seconds later Edmond heard sharp words of command from his
lieutenant, who had crawled along to him, and in obedience he ceased
firing his Mauser, took the dead man's place and assumed charge of the
machine-gun, which, within another half-minute, was continuing its work,
while the body of the _onder-officier_ was dragged aside.
"Curse the grey devils! They shall pay for that!" cried one of the men
fiercely.
Just then, however, there came a lull in the firing. The shells had
ceased, and the enemy was slackening in his attack all along the line.
Was the fight subsiding?
A dull, distant roar was heard from Boncelles, where the steel cupolas
were rising, and the big guns hurling death at the grey hordes of the
Kaiser, and then disappearing. Then silence.
Suddenly another loud crackling of rifles, and again Edmond's pom-pom
recommenced its rapid rhythmic rattle.
More Mausers crackling, the shrill yell of a shell passing over them,
and then a blood-red explosion some distance behind them.
Another shouted word of command, and the whole line of rifles were again
discharged. It seemed almost as a signal for the fight to recommence,
for next moment the attack was renewed with redoubled vigour.
The short, sharp reports of the enemy's artillery reverberated along the
valley, and shells were now exploding unpleasantly near the trenches.
"I thought they had had enough," growled one of the men to Edmond, in
French, "but it seems they haven't. _Bien_, we will show the Kaiser and
his brigands that we mean defiance. See, over there, m'sieur! They are
burning Vise, and Argenteau too! I lived in Vise when a boy. My sister
is there now--unless she has escaped into Holland. I pray to God the
poor girl has done so."
"I sincerely hope she has," Edmond declared. "It surely is no place for
a woman down yonder."
"_Ah, mon vieux_, they've been killing women and children, the savages,"
growled another man with set teeth, as he took out a fresh belt of
cartridges. "I heard so as we came along from Liege. But I can't
believe it to be true. The Germans are surely not savages, but a
cultured race."
"Culture?" snapped the first man, a somewhat rough, uncouth fellow,
plainly of the peasant class. "If they were cultured, as it is said,
they would not burn those undefended villages yonder, and massacre the
inhabitants as they are doing. It is horrible--awful!"
"Ah, but the massacres are only hearsay," Edmond remarked.
"No. One man, an eye-witness, has escaped from Vise. He swam the
river, told the terrible truth, and the report was telephoned this
morning to Brussels. I overheard our captain tell the major as we were
on the march here. The Germans have shot down dozens of men and women,
and even little children. Some of them have been deliberately burned
alive in their homes. That, m'sieur, is the way Germany makes war! But
surely that is not war--it is savage butchery, m'sieur. Culture, bah!"
And the man bent again to his gun.
Could those brave Belgians have seen what was, at that moment, happening
in those unoffending villages about them, they would surely have left
their trenches and, even regardless of the pitiless fire of the enemy,
dashed to the rescue of the poor unoffending inhabitants. On that warm,
bright sunlit August day, whole villages were being put to the sword by
the ruthless soldiery of the Kaiser, upon the flimsy pretext that the
villagers, being non-combatants, had fired upon the troops. Yet the
truth came out that such massacres of the inhabitants were actually part
of the general plan of campaign. The Kaiser had ordered those
cold-blooded atrocities for purely strategical considerations. They
were not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of marauding and
buccaneering soldiers, but were ordered by Imperial command.
Over there, among those green hillsides sloping to the river, the
Teutonic wave had burst its bounds. Fiendish tortures were being
inflicted on helpless old men, women, and children. Peaceful villagers
were hanged to trees, sometimes stark naked, and their bodies riddled by
bullets. Innocent children were savagely sabred by German officers who,
only a week before, were strutting in civilised drawing-rooms, the
scented and elegant darlings of the ladies of Berlin.
At that hour, while Edmond Valentin crouched beside his newly acquired
pom-pom, pouring a deadly fire away across the river, there were being
enacted scenes of outrage, plunder, and massacre too terrible even to
bear description--scenes in which blood-guilty ruffians of the great War
Lord of Germany performed their grim and terrible work, a work so
dastardly and inhuman as to have no parallel; atrocious acts actually
ordered by the officers themselves, and which would for ever be handed
down in history as an indelible blot upon the escutcheon of those
blasphemous and barbarous brigands who loved to call their country the
Fatherland.
That strip of green, smiling, undulating country between the German
frontier and the Meuse, dotted by small prosperous villages, many of
them filled by factory-hands and work-people, was that day swept by the
fierce fiery hurricane of war, and so suddenly had it all come upon them
that most of the people had not had time to realise what war meant ere
they found the swaggering Uhlans clattering up the streets, shouting at
and insulting the inhabitants, shooting down men, women, and children,
and laughing heartily at the panic which their appearance caused.
From where Edmond Valentin was posted he could only see the columns of
black smoke as it rose steadily from the farms and villages now burning
in all directions. He, like nearly everyone else, disbelieved the
stories of murder and mutilation, for they were really in credible.
Surely the Kaiser would never treat little Belgium in such a manner
after his Empire solemnly guaranteeing its neutrality!
If so, of what use were treaties? Why should anybody's signature be
honoured further, either in business or in social life?
Bang! There was a blood-red flash, the air was filled with blue-grey
smoke and a poisonous odour which made one's eyes smart. For a second,
Edmond was staggered by the terrible force of the concussion, for he had
been dealt a blow from behind which sent him reeling forward heavily.
The air was filled with flying fragments, and he held his breath. It
was as though an earthquake had occurred.
Then, when the smoke cleared, he saw a dozen of his comrades lying
shattered about him, including two of the men at his gun. Not far away
the scorched grass had been torn up, and a great hole showed in the
brown earth.
He set his teeth, and bent over the two fallen men. One had been
wounded in the stomach by a fragment of the shell, and was writhing on
the ground in his death agony, uttering fearful curses upon the enemy
and the Kaiser in particular; while the other, after a final convulsive
shudder which shook his whole frame and told its own tale to anybody who
had been under fire in battle, turned slowly over and then lay quite
still.
The shell alas! had only been too truly placed, for not only were a
dozen brave fellows lying shattered, but a splinter had also struck the
breech of Edmond's gun, and it had jammed in consequence.
When serving before with the Chasseurs he had been in charge of a
machine-gun, and hence was thoroughly familiar with its mechanism.
Therefore, quite calmly, as though no fight were in progress, he quickly
unscrewed the parts, discovered that a pin was bent and knocked it
straight, and within five minutes the pom-pom was again pouring forth,
its rain of lead sweeping to and fro across the railway line opposite.
Suddenly, with a roar and flash, another earthquake occurred. The air
instantly became filled with black acrid smoke and flying fragments of
shell from one of the enemy's howitzers beyond the hills, and at that
moment the trench became a perfect inferno, for deadly shells were
falling upon it, and dozens of Edmond's comrades were being maimed or
killed on every hand.
As the smoke cleared slightly he bent again to sight the gun, when his
eye caught the bridge below, whereon the dastardly enemy had placed that
vanload of brave Belgians as a parti-coloured screen.
Just as he looked, he saw a shell, fired deliberately by a German
gunner, strike the van, explode, and next second there remained only a
heap of wreckage, among which the twenty poor fellows who had been
imprisoned in it were lying heaped, dead and dying, some of them
shattered out of all recognition.
"The murderers!" cried Edmond, while his men, who also noticed what had
happened, loudly cursed the ruthless barbarians with whom they now found
themselves confronted.
Bang! The explosion was deafening. Edmond again felt the concussion
where he was crouching. It knocked his shako aside, and for a second he
believed he had been hit. Yet, by a miracle, he was unharmed.
Next second an order was shouted--the order to retire!
The Germans, now using their artillery and shelling the Belgian
trenches, were advancing. They were crossing the bridge below, and a
pontoon section had already begun its work under fire.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Shells were falling thickly now. Their defence had, alas! been all in
vain. Edmond heard the order shouted in Flemish.
"_Vlucht! Vlucht_!" shouted the lieutenant. Edmond stood for a second
like a man in a dream. The earth everywhere was being whipped by
bullets.
Then he directed his men to dismantle the gun and, two others helping,
each quickly shouldering a piece, the little party made off with the
Chasseurs over the crest of the hill and down the other side, leaving
behind them, alas! many hundreds of their poor comrades.
Bang! Yet another shell fell, rending a great hole in the trench at the
very spot where, only a few moments before, Edmond Valentin's gun had
been standing.