New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January Part 23

*The Battles in Belgium*

[An a.s.sociated Press Dispatch.]

LONDON, Oct. 26, 4:40 A.M.--The correspondent of The Daily News, who has been in an armored train to the banks of the Yser, gives a good description of the battle in the North. He says:

"The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life. Air engines, sea engines, and land engines deathsweep this desolate country, vertically, horizontally, and transversely. Through it the frail little human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled, ordered here and there, sleeping where they can, never washing, and dying unnoticed. A friend may find himself firing on a friendly force, and few are to blame.

"Thursday the Germans were driven back over the Yser; Friday they secured a footing again, and Sat.u.r.day they were again hurled back. Now a bridge blown up by one side is repaired by the other; it is again blown up by the first, or left as a death trap till the enemy is actually crossing.

"Actions by armored trains, some of them the most reckless adventures, are attempted daily. Each day acc.u.mulates an unwritten record of individual daring feats, accepted as part of the daily work. Day by day our men push out on these dangerous explorations, attacked by sh.e.l.l fire, in danger of cross-fire, dynamite, and ambuscades, bringing a priceless support to the threatened lines. As the armored train approaches the river under sh.e.l.l fire the car cracks with the constant thunder of guns aboard. It is amazing to see the angle at which the guns can be swung.

"And overhead the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of exploding sh.e.l.ls to get one small fact of information. We used to regard the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece of impudent defiance to our infantry fire. Now we know its means early trouble for the infantry.

"Besides us, as we crawl up snuffing the lines like dogs on a scent, grim trainloads of wounded wait soundlessly in the sidings. Further up the line ambulances are coming slowly back. The bullets of machine guns begin to rattle on our armored coats. Sh.e.l.ls we learned to disregard, but the machine gun is the master in this war.

"Now we near the river at a flat country farm. The territory is scarred with trenches, and it is impossible to say at first who is in them, so incidental and separate are the fortunes of this riverside battle. The Germans are on our bank enfilading the lines of the Allies' trenches. We creep up and the Germans come into sight out of the trenches, rush to the bank, and are scattered and mashed. The Allies follow with a fierce bayonet charge.

"The Germans do not wait. They rush to the bridges and are swept away by the deadliest destroyer of all, the machine gun. The bridge is blown up, but who can say by whom. Quickly the train runs back.

"'A brisk day,' remarks the correspondent. 'Not so bad,' replies the officer. So the days pa.s.s."

The Telegraph's correspondent in Belgium, who, accompanied by a son of the Belgian War Minister, M. de Broqueville, made a tour of the battleground in the Dixmude district last Wednesday, says:

"No pen could do justice to the grandeur and horror of the scene. As far as the eye could reach nothing could be seen but burning villages and bursting sh.e.l.ls. I realized for the first time how completely the motor car had revolutionized warfare and how every other factor was now dominated by the absence or presence of this unique means of transport.

"Every road to the front was simply packed with cars. They seemed an ever-rolling, endless stream, going and returning to the front, while in many villages hundreds of private cars were parked under the control of the medical officer, waiting in readiness to carry the wounded.

"Arrived at the firing line, a terrible scene presented itself. The sh.e.l.l fire from the German batteries was so terrific that Belgian soldiers and French marines were continually being blown out of their dugouts and sent scattering to cover. Elsewhere, also, little groups of peasants were forced to flee because their cellars began to fall in.

These unfortunates had to make their way as best they could on foot to the rear. They were frightened to death by the bursting sh.e.l.ls, and the sight of crying children among them was most pathetic.

"Dixmude was the objective of the German attack, and sh.e.l.ls were bursting all over it, crashing among the roofs and blowing whole streets to pieces. From a distance of three miles we could hear them crashing down, but the town itself was invisible, except for the flames and the smoke and clouds rising above it. The Belgians had only a few field batteries, so that the enemy's howitzers simply dominated the field, and the infantry trenches around the town had to rely upon their own unaided efforts.

"Our progress along the road was suddenly stopped by one of the most horrible sights I have ever seen. A heavy howitzer sh.e.l.l had fallen and burst right in the midst of a Belgian battery, making its way to the front, causing terrible destruction. The mangled horses and men among the debris presented a shocking spectacle.

"Eventually, we got into Dixmude itself, and every time a sh.e.l.l came crashing among the roofs we thought our end had come. The Hotel de Ville (town hall) was a sad sight. The roof was completely riddled by sh.e.l.l, while inside was a scene of chaos. It was piled with loaves of bread, bicycles, and dead soldiers.

"The battle redoubled in fury, and by 7 o'clock in the evening Dixmude was a furnace, presenting a scene of terrible grandeur. The horizon was red with burning homes.

"Our return journey was a melancholy one, owing to the constant trains of wounded that were pa.s.sing."

The Daily Mail's Rotterdam correspondent, telegraphing Sunday evening, says:

"Slowly but surely the Germans are being beaten back on the western wing, and old men and young lads are being hurried to the front. The enemy were in strong force at Dixmude, where the Allies were repulsed once, only to attack again with renewed vigor.

"Roulers resembles a shambles. It was taken and retaken four times, and battered to ruins in the process. The German guns made the place untenable for the Allies.

"An Oosburg message says the firing at Ostend is very heavy, and that the British are sh.e.l.ling the suburbs, which are held by the Germans.

Last night and this morning large bodies of Germans left Bruges for Ostend. It is believed the Ostend piers have been blown up."

"The position on the coast is stationary this morning," says a Daily Mail dispatch from Flushing, Netherlands, under date of Sunday. "There is less firing and it is more to the southward. No alteration of the situation is reported from Ostend.

"The German losses are frightful. Three meadows near Ostend are heaped with dead. The wounded are now installed in private houses in Bruges, where large wooden sheds are being rushed up to receive additional injured. Thirty-seven farm wagons containing wounded, dying, and dead pa.s.sed in one hour near Middelkerke.

"The Germans have been working at new intrenchments between Coq sur Mer and Wenduyne to protect their road to Bruges."

Gen. von Tripp and nearly all his staff, who were killed in a church tower at Leffinghe by the fire from the British warships, have been buried in Ostend.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Flanders and Northern France--How the Battle Line Has Changed (Up to Jan. 1, 1915) Since the War Began.]

*Seeking Wounded on Battle Front*

By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.

FURNES, Belgium, Oct. 21.--The staff of the English hospital, to which a mobile column has been attached for field work, has arrived here with a convoy of ambulances and motor cars. This little party of doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers, and chauffeurs, under the direction of Dr.

Bevis and Dr. Munro, has done splendid work in Belgium, and many of them were in the siege of Antwerp.

Miss Macnaughton, the novelist, was one of those who went through this great test of courage, and Lady Dorothie Feilding, one of Lord Denbigh's daughters, won everybody's love by her gallantry and plucky devotion to duty in many perilous hours. She takes all risks with laughing courage.

She has been under fire in many hot skirmishes, and has helped bring away the wounded from the fighting around Ghent when her own life might have paid the forfeit for defiance to bursting sh.e.l.ls.

This morning a flying column of the hospital was preparing to set out in search of wounded men on the firing line under direction of Lieut. de Broqueville, son of the Belgian War Minister. The Lieutenant, very cool and debonair, was arranging the order of the day with Dr. Munro. Lady Dorothie Feilding and the two other women in field kit stood by their cars, waiting for the pa.s.sword. There were four stretcher-bearers, including Mr. Gleeson, an American, who has worked with this party around Ghent and Antwerp, proving himself to be a man of calm and quiet courage at a critical moment, always ready to take great risks in order to bring in a wounded man.

It was decided to take three ambulances and two motor cars. Lieut. de Broqueville antic.i.p.ated a heavy day's work. He invited me to accompany the column in a car which I shared with Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett of The London Daily Telegraph, who also volunteered for the expedition.

We set out before noon, winding our way through the streets of Furnes.

We were asked to get into Dixmude, where there were many wounded. It is about ten miles away from Furnes. As we went along the road, nearer to the sound of the great guns which for the last hour or two had been firing incessantly, we pa.s.sed many women and children. They were on their way to some place further from the firing. Poor old grandmothers in black bonnets and skirts trudged along the lines of poplars with younger women, who clasped their babies tightly in one hand, while with the other they carried heavy bundles of household goods.

Along the road came German prisoners, marching rapidly between mounted guards. Many of them were wounded, and all of them had a wild, famished, terror-stricken look.

At a turn in the road the battle lay before us, and we were in the zone of fire. Away across the fields was a line of villages with the town of Dixmude a little to the right of us, perhaps a mile and a quarter away.

From each little town smoke was rising in separate columns which met at the top in a great black pall. At every moment this blackness was brightened by puffs of electric blue, extraordinarily vivid, as sh.e.l.ls burst in the air. From the ma.s.s of houses in each town came jets of flame, following explosions which sounded with terrific thudding shocks.

On a line of about nine miles there was an incessant cannonade. The farthest villages were already on fire.

Quite close to us, only about half a mile across the fields to the left, there were Belgian batteries at work and rifle fire from many trenches.

We were between two fires, and Belgian and German sh.e.l.ls came screeching over our heads. The German sh.e.l.ls were dropping quite close to us, plowing up the fields with great pits. We could hear them burst and scatter and could see them burrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ADMIRAL SIR JOHN JELLICOE Commanding the British Fleets (_Photo from Rogers._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEN. VICTOR DANKL The Austrian Commander in the Russian Campaign (_Photo from Bain News Service._)]

In front of us on the road lay a dreadful barrier, which brought us to a halt. A German sh.e.l.l had fallen right on top of an ammunition convoy.

Four horses had been blown to pieces and their carca.s.ses lay strewn across the road. The ammunition wagon had been broken into fragments and smashed and burned to cinders by the explosion of its own sh.e.l.ls. A Belgian soldier lay dead, cut in half by a great fragment of steel.

Further along the road were two other dead horses in pools of blood. It was a horrible and sickening sight, from which one turned away shuddering with cold sweat, but we had to pa.s.s it after some of this dead flesh had been dragged away.