[From The London Times, Oct. 17, 1914. By its Special Correspondent
lately in Antwerp.]
Before it fades I would like to record my impression of the Belgian
soldier as I have seen him day after day through the two months ending
with the fall of Antwerp.
I have seen him on every kind of duty and off, on the roads, in
cabarets, in camp and barrack, on the march, in trenches, fighting
from behind all sorts of cover or from none, on foot, on horseback, on
bicycles, mounted proudly on his auto-mitrailleuse, or running behind
his gun-team of dogs, each dog pulling and barking as if it would tear
the whole German Army to pieces. I have seen him wounded on
battlefields, by the roadside, and in hospitals; I have seen him, in
the later days at Antwerp, brought back from the forts and from those
terrible advanced trenches unwounded, but from sheer exhaustion in
almost more serious plight than any of his comrades whom the shells
had hit. And I have seen him dead.
As a result there has grown up in me an extraordinary affection for
him. Greater even than my admiration of his careless courage is my
liking for the man. For all his manhood he has so much of the child in
him; he is such a chatterbox and so full of laughter, and never are
his laugh and badinage so quick as when he has the sternest work on
hand. Unshaven, mud-bespattered, hungry, so tired that he can hardly
walk or lift his rifle to his shoulder, he will bear himself with a
gallant gayety which, I think, is quite his own and is altogether
fascinating.
As time goes on perhaps it will be the faces of the dead and wounded
that will live most clearly in the memory, but at present the pictures
of the Belgian soldier which stand out sharpest are less lugubrious
and more commonplace.
I walked one day back toward Antwerp, along that awful road which ran
by Contich and Waerloos to Waelhem. Daily along that road the German
shells fell nearer to the city, so that whenever one went out to the
place that he had visited yesterday he was likely to find himself
disagreeably surprised. One day I found myself, (I would not have
been there had I known it,) perhaps a mile inside the range of the
enemy's guns. A Red Cross car had dropped me and picked up wounded men
instead, and there was nothing for it but to walk back along the road.
Along the road from the foremost trenches came a dozen Belgian
soldiers, just relieved after twenty-four hours of what it is
difficult to describe otherwise than as hell. Muddied from head to
heel, they could hardly drag their feet along, and, glad of any
company, I fell in and walked with the last straggler of the little
band, while the shrapnel with its long-drawn scream--whew-ew-ew-ew-bang!--broke
on either side of us.
At every whew-ew-ew-ew which came too near I dived for cover. If there
was no friendly wall or vehicle or tree trunk at hand the ditch beside
the road was always there. And every time I dived my companion stood
in the middle of the road and shook with laughter--not unkindly, but
in the utmost friendliness and good humor--waiting till I rejoined him
and we resumed our walk.
A little man, shockingly bedraggled, worn out almost to the point of
collapse, utterly indifferent to his own danger, and taking a huge,
childlike delight in my care for my personal safety, the picture of
him as he stood and laughed all alone in the bare road amid the
bursting shells seems to me curiously typical of the whole Belgian
Army.
Another picture also--a composite photograph--I shall never forget. It
is the same man--sometimes blonde, sometimes dark, but always the same
smallish man--as, on picket duty, he stops you to examine your papers.
He does not understand the papers in the least. The British passport
begins with the words, "We, Sir Edward Grey, a Baronet of the United
Kingdom...." Sternly he wrinkles his brow over the formidable
document, earnestly trying to do his duty. At last, "Votre nom,
Edouard Gra-ee?" he asks. You explain that you wish that it was and
call attention to the place where your own insignificant name is
mentioned lower down. To his immense relief he has mastered the
central fact, namely, that you are English. And his face lights up
with the smile which one has come to know so well; a smile of real
pleasure and good-will.
Sometimes he speaks a word of English, and with what pride he uses it!
"All ri'!" "Good night!" "How do?" And you go on into the night
feeling that you are leaving a friend behind whom you would like to
stop and talk to. And he, you know, has been cheered in his lonely
duty by the mere contact with an ally.