Liege on the Line of March Part 8

Twenty-four hours after Germany declared war on France and had already crossed the frontier into Belgium, the Austrian family disappeared in the night, taking with them their household goods. The next day Belgian authorities seized the property and found a complete a.r.s.enal under the walls with a net-work of tunnels burrowing far into the earth in all directions.

_October 3rd, Sat.u.r.day._

During the last forty-eight hours, hundreds of cattle cars have been going back to Germany and we were very curious as to their contents.

Unhappily, we have been enlightened.

Some of the villagers at the station, this morning, looked into one car and saw that it was full of dead human bodies, tied together in threes and packed tightly side by side in rows. Is that not too horrible for words? It is better not to be too inquisitive these days, for there is horror enough on the surface of things.

The Germans have already taken some of the forts of Antwerp, although the country surrounding the outer belt line of forts has been purposely inundated, which does not, however, prevent the operation of big field cannon.

About fourteen of our wounded at the Convent Ambulance were sent to Germany today as prisoners. We went to see them off and found the poor things absolutely overwhelmed. Against the fear of cold and imprisonment, they put on as many clothes as possible--two suits of underwear, two pairs of socks, two pairs of trousers, coats, shirts, sweaters and waistcoats--until they looked like stuffed partridges.

Poor, feathered brood, with pinioned wings! At three P. M. our (usually) gay boys were led out of the court, two by two, like convicts, a Prussian at the head of the column and a Prussian at the foot.

Oh, these Belgians are brave and they know how to obey, which may be the very secret of their greatness. It is glorious to see the respect with which even grown men accept the advice of their aged parents, for at the moment of peril to their honor and their country when the old father had said to his son, "My boy, it is time to lay down the hoe and take up the sword," he had answered, simply, "_Oui, mon pere_," while the women brought out the sword and buckled it on with a tearless G.o.dspeed.

That is the way the Belgians went to war and that is the way they will sustain themselves to the glorious end.

_October 5th, Monday._

To-day, two months after that horrible battle of Sartilmont, we found a Belgian soldier's cap lying in the middle of the path in the woods. It seemed like a human thing and stirred me to the profoundest depths. I never thought that clothes could take on life and a personality all alone, but they do. Has its owner been in hiding all these weeks or is he lying yet unburied among the friendly trees? In these places where Death has walked so boldly one feels his accompanying presence at every step.

_October 8th, Thursday._

Monsieur B., a man of seventy years (Madame X.'s brother-in-law), was taken as hostage yesterday at Spa. Fortunately for him, he was allowed to sleep in the hotel, but can you imagine what the anxiety of those twenty-four hours was? Every voice in the street, every foot-step in the corridor--!

From the top of the mountain all day a continual booming was heard, distantly transmitted through the air. It was so incessant and with such vivacity, one could easily imagine two armies all mixed up into one. The Red Cross trains bear witness to tremendous battles somewhere--but where? We hardly know how to contain ourselves in this absolute ignorance of what is happening in the world. We rush upon and tear to bits, like beasts of prey, the least little piece of news that comes straggling within reach and if, by chance, someone comes into the court, it is enough for all the family, including the servants, to rush to the windows in excitement.

The soldiers who are in the garage had the delicate idea of killing a cow therein, which they did, and dismantled the animal then and there.

The next day they dressed themselves in Belgian uniforms, stripped from the dead, and had themselves photographed before the chateau. We noticed their laughing and pointing to the attic windows of the house, and we finally discovered that they had festooned strings of sausages, of their own recent make, from the window sills, to ripen.

A Baron de S. spent the night here, and told us of the ravages made by the pa.s.sing troops at his chateau down in the country. They had buried a Frenchman in one corner of the garden and two Germans in another and nothing was left but the house. All engravings and paintings were cut with a sword; silver platters were melted in a lump in the court yard; meat was cut up on a beautiful salon table; shoe polish was rubbed on another; pipes in the kitchen and bathroom were cut to flood the rooms; every gla.s.s in the house was broken and all the linen carried off except the handkerchiefs.

_October 9th, Friday._

Baron T., another friend of the family, came to lunch. He told us of his cousin, who was one of the unfortunate victims of the sack of Louvain.

This aged man (seventy years) with a thousand others, was obliged to walk for twenty-four hours with nothing to eat or drink and arms stretched up straight over their heads. The poor man, fainting with fatigue, asked permission of the soldiers to put his hands behind his neck, but this grace was denied, and after some hours more all the company was pushed into a cattle train and for eight days taken over the country, as far as Cologne, and at last released in Brussels, almost demented.

When this Monsieur--of whom I speak, found himself free again he made his way, laboriously enough, to his brother's house in Brussels.

The _maitre d'hotel_ opened the door and, seeing this haggard, bootless individual, who was weakened with fatigue and dazed from his recent horrible experience, did not recognize him, naturally enough, and refused him admission until the old gentleman got his poor scattered brains together enough to prove his ident.i.ty. This is the story as we have it first-hand. Can it then be possible that the others we heard are true, too?

_October 10th, Sat.u.r.day._

I have been advertised! like a stray dog, and what a feeling of importance it gives one. A peculiar looking doc.u.ment with the Emba.s.sy seals of Paris and Brussels on it, arrived from the American Consul in Liege enquiring if such a person as "Me" still exists.

Well, rather, I should say. Fancy one's coming all the way on foot from Brussels to find out that!

Ma.s.ses of soldiers and cannon pa.s.sing today and news from Brussels is bad. The worst must have happened! "Antwerp, the untakable." How is it possible in a few days, with fifty-two forts in triple line? We were so depressed we could scarcely eat dinner, when about nine P. M.

came the news, from a man of affairs who is just back from Brussels, that the rumor is false. We shall sleep tonight after this hope and the end of the world is not today, anyway.

_October 11th, Sunday._

We have heard the raging of a distant battle for days and we tremble for the result. It seems that Antwerp is really taken, that is, "they say"

so, but it is such a mystery to everybody.

A Dutch army nurse--but in the German Red Cross service--is here for a few days' furlough, and related to Madame X. some horrible details of the battlefield in France, whence she has recently come. It is just one scene of mud and blood--pieces of limbs strewn everywhere and the dead standing straight against ma.s.ses of bodies, both living and dead. In some towns she saw women and children pinioned with a sword through the breast to the walls of their houses, and in Belgium the women and children were often obliged to hold the hands of the men whom the soldiers shot at random, according to their fancy. Here again are tales that one hears that I cannot a.s.sert as facts, though this woman told them as her own experiences.

Madame X. received a card from Charles, the young gardener, who is now safe in France training with the Belgian army near Dunkirque. You are doubtless wondering how a card arrived here, as we have had no mail since August 2nd. It was sent to a certain bank in Holland which is not far from the Belgian frontier and a messenger brought it on foot.

And I have sent you back a letter, dear people, scribbled at top speed (without capitals, t's crossed nor i's dotted, probably) by the same messenger who takes his life in his hands when he pa.s.ses the guard at the Dutch frontier again. If letters are found on this person he will certainly be shot, so whether you ever receive my communication will be a matter of history.

_October 13th, Tuesday._

The old concierge of the hunting box at Viel Salm (near Malmedy, Germany), who has been dying of tuberculosis for twenty years, arrived here tonight, having walked the whole distance of seventy five kilometres. This shows the faithfulness of the old servant who thought he must come to report the sacking of the villa by the German troops which occurred in the early days of August.

The poor man could not have hobbled another step, for he was at the end of his strength and his feet were just two great blisters. He told a shocking tale of the troops, who entirely pillaged the villa. While he went to complain of them at the _Kommandantur_ of the place, others came and what they did not break up, they took off. Pictures, engravings and mirrors were broken, the leather chairs slit up with a sabre--artistically done in the shape of a cross--and porcelain smashed in the middle of the courtyard. You can see by this that pillaging and atrocities began when the troops were hardly over the frontier.

In one of the numerous pillaged chateaux around about, an extraordinary bit of literature, in fact a masterpiece, has been found by the chatelaine. A tiny sc.r.a.p of paper sticking out from a book had these words scribbled on it in German: "I am only a common soldier but I ask pardon for these atrocities, committed by my superior officers."