World's War Events Volume I Part 13

From the soldier at the steering gear I learned that that bullet had pa.s.sed over the shoulder of the man in the turret.

[Sidenote: Bombardment of Nieuport.]

Twenty-four hours later, at Nieuport, when the German sh.e.l.ls seemed to be falling in every street and on every house, I saw this car again, going forward at not less than forty miles an hour. The turret was being swung to bring the gun-muzzle forward, as if the gunner were expecting to go into action almost immediately. As the last of the Belgian trenches were just the other side of the town, I have no doubt that he did.

[Sidenote: A walk to the firing line.]

Getting out of Dunkirk was rather more of a problem than going in. To obtain permission to ride toward the Belgian line in any kind of conveyance was an elaborate performance, and quite properly so, as I soon learned. There were preparations for defence going on there which should not have been publicly known. The country was full of spies. Four suspects had been picked up on the boat coming from Folkestone. If I had realized what I was to see in the next few miles I would not have attempted what I did. But, as I was anxious to get on and the firing-line was only twenty miles away, I decided to walk.

A French hat and a French suit of clothes, I think, were alone responsible for my success in pa.s.sing through the city gate. Two military automobiles were stopped and forced to show their credentials, but I strolled through unmolested. Once outside, the reservists guarding the various barricades let me pa.s.s as soon as I showed them my pa.s.sport vised in Dunkirk. I was stopped many times, too, trying each time not to give an appearance of too great interest in the works of defence being built all around me.

[Sidenote: Sand-dune barricades.]

Even though this cannot be published for some time I do not feel free to tell what these defences were. I have no doubt there are complete descriptions of these works in the hands of the German army, their spy system is so thorough, but I would not care to have any military secrets escape through anything I write. I think I can go so far as to say, though, that I received a liberal education in how to barricade sand-dunes and low-lying fields.

Ten miles out of Dunkirk I was surprised to see a civilian on a bicycle, as civilians were no longer permitted to go near the theatre of war on bicycles, a precaution taken against spies. As he approached I recognized Mr. J. Obels, the Belgian correspondent of the Chicago _Daily News_, whom I had last seen under arrest near Brussels when the German army first pa.s.sed through Belgium. He told me he had been kept in prison seventeen days by the German military governor of Brussels, but, once released, was given every possible kind of pa.s.s. I was relieved to see him alive and free.

As Obels left me to continue his journey to Dunkirk and on to London to deliver his own "copy," he advised me to go directly to Furnes, the most considerable town in what was left of Belgium, and have my pa.s.sport vised again. So I continued down the long, flat highway, bordered on both sides by sunken fields, toward the cannonading I could now hear ahead. The road had been fairly full of automobiles, motor-trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles over its whole length, but it became crowded now with the addition of a long string of Parisian motor-buses taking several infantry regiments forward. A whole artillery division of yellow French "Schneiders" also took up its share of the wide road, and at the barricades there were traffic blockades lasting at times for ten minutes.

[Sidenote: The road to Furnes.]

All the way from Dunkirk I had been struck by the character of the land.

As I approached Furnes, the d.y.k.es were being opened and half the fields were already inundated. It seemed a poor country for military operations. There were at most three highways, all defended. They could only be taken at a price no army could afford, and any departure from them meant being mired in the heavy fields, now being hastily harvested of a b.u.mper crop of sugar-beets: at one place a whole French regiment in uniform was gathering the beets preparatory to inundation. With the d.y.k.es open these fields would be covered with four feet of water half the time. The only possible course for an army was over the sand-dunes, which lay a mile to the north, looking like the imitation mountains you see in the scenic-railways at every amus.e.m.e.nt resort in the United States.

[Sidenote: Tommies' battles on the sand-dunes.]

A reservist with whom I walked a mile or so told me Dunkirk had never been successfully attacked except over those sand-dunes, and the English and French had fought some of the bloodiest battles of history there against the Spanish, when they held Dunkirk. I doubt, though, that they were as b.l.o.o.d.y as the battle I was to see within a few hours.

[Sidenote: Belgian soldiers.]

The old Flemish town of Furnes had much less military precision about it than Dunkirk. It was on the very edge of the battle, and an occasional sh.e.l.l was dropping in the town. One exploded as I crossed the bridge and entered a narrow street, but it was on the far side of town, too far away for the soldiers halted in the street to notice. These were tired and dirty men, but not too tired to be courteous. They were also pa.s.sing jokes among themselves, and laughing. By that, even if I had not known their uniforms, I could have told they were Belgians.

[Sidenote: The enemy held at the Yser.]

Every street and every courtyard in Furnes was full of Belgian soldiers.

They were resting for the day, waiting to go forward at night-fall to relieve the men on the firing line only five miles away. Even above the noises of the street I could hear the answer of their small field artillery to the heavy a.s.sault of the German guns. Nothing I heard the soldiers say, however, would have given the idea that the Belgians considered themselves outcla.s.sed by their enemy. They seemed superbly unconscious of the absurdity of their position. This was the tenth day they had held the Germans at the Yser, and they had done it with rifles and machine guns, taking punishment every minute from the big fieldpieces the Germans had brought against them. So far they had lost twelve thousand men at that ditch, but the thought of giving it up had evidently not even occurred to them. They could not give it up, one of them explained to me later, it was all they had left. There was a little irritation in his tone, too, as he said it, such as one might feel toward a child who was slow at grasping a simple fact.

[Sidenote: Military automobiles and wagons.]

The town square was full of military automobiles and a few provision wagons. I did not see any fieldpieces or machine guns. Every last one was right up on the firing-line. My feet were tired from walking over the Belgian blocks, and I held tenaciously to the sidewalk pa.s.sing around the square, though it was mostly taken up with cafe tables and bay trees in boxes. At one point the tables were empty and a single sentry was sauntering up and down. I stopped to ask him the way to the _gendarmerie_, and, in the middle of giving me the directions, he came to attention, as a door opened behind me, and saluted.

[Sidenote: Two Belgian generals.]

Two men came out of the door, one rather tall, with an easy manner, and smartly dressed as a general in the Belgian army. The other was older, also a general, wearing, if anything, the more gold braid of the two.

They entered a waiting automobile and drove off as casually as two men at home might leave their office for their club.

Something about the first of the two men impressed me as familiar. I had only seen his back, but that had arrested my attention. I thought possibly I had seen him at the beginning of the war in Brussels, so I asked the sentry his name.

[Sidenote: King Albert.]

"That is our king, Albert," he said quite simply.

During the next couple of days I saw the King of Belgium a number of times. He spent his nights at a small villa on the seash.o.r.e at La Panne, a hundred yards possibly beyond the hotel where I spent mine. He pa.s.sed through the streets as unnoticed as any one of the other Belgians who had retreated from Antwerp and Ghent ahead of the army, but preferred the chilly nights in an unheated seaside hotel in Belgium to comfort somewhere beyond. It seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of the Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony at this trying time. I doubt if he cares much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around for a single adjective to describe him, I should call him off-handed. His manner, even then, while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why the Belgians love him. If kings had always been as simple and direct as Albert, I am inclined to think democracy would have languished.

[Sidenote: Luncheon at La Panne.]

At La Panne, which I reached at noon on a little steam railway running from Furnes, I had luncheon with several Belgian soldiers and a Belgian in civilian clothes, who told me I would see all the fighting I was looking for at Nieuport, just beyond. The civilian, a tall youth with a blond beard, volunteered to show me the way to the beach, the shortest route, and ended by going all the way. He told me he was recovering from an "attack of Congo," which I take to be an intermittent fever. He had just been mustered out of the civic guard and was waiting for a uniform to join the army. He had the afternoon free and his Belgian sense of hospitality impelled him to see that the stranger was properly looked after.

For several miles along the wide, flat beach, which stretches un.o.bstructed as far as Ostend, except for the piers at Nieuport-les-Bains and Westende, there were Belgian soldiers bathing in the shallow water.

Some of them, cavalrymen, were riding naked into the deeper water, and this, mind you, was late October. They were even playing jokes on one another, and did not seem to be paying any attention to the fifteen English and French cruisers and gunboats which were standing off the sh.o.r.e almost opposite them, keeping up a steady stream of fire obliquely along the beach at the sand dunes just beyond the pier at Nieuport-les-Bains. In these dunes, _five_ miles away, big German guns were hidden.

[Sidenote: Fishermen unconcerned.]

Farther on, and even right up to the pier at Nieuport, we pa.s.sed, along the beach behind the shrimp fishermen, who seemed even less interested in the novel fight on land and sea. The barelegged men and women were as industriously taking advantage of the low-tide as if nothing at all were happening. The French and English warships were directly opposite them, and, by this time, they were drawing the German fire. German sh.e.l.ls, probably from siege guns, were plumping down into the water all around them only a couple of miles off-sh.o.r.e, but, though the shrimpers looked up occasionally when the explosion of a sh.e.l.l fairly shook the face of the ocean, their attention would be directed again to their work before the column of water raised by the sh.e.l.l had had time to fall again. The sh.e.l.ling kept up about an hour, but none of the warships was struck.

They kept moving at full-speed in an uneven line, making it impossible to get their range.

[Sidenote: A panorama of battle.]

[Sidenote: Germans try to cross the Yser.]

Just before we reached the pier heavy cannonading began inland. We climbed the sand dunes and there we came suddenly upon a perfect panoramic view of the battle all the way from the dunes across the inundated fields to Dixmude in the distance. The whole line of battle for ten miles was in the midst of a German attack, covered by a terrific artillery fire. Over the white, red-tiled cottages of the fishermen, almost lost among the lesser sand dunes, we could make out the Belgian line by the fire of their rifle and machine guns. At two points we could see the Yser Ca.n.a.l and at one of these the Germans were trying to throw across a pontoon bridge.

We could see it only through the smoke of breaking sh.e.l.ls, but it was the most exciting event I have ever witnessed. At three miles or more, though, the figures of the men were so small, it was hard to keep the fact in mind that those who dropped were not merely stooping, but had been shot. Eager to get closer, we ran over the sand dunes, but never got another view of it.

[Sidenote: Running to see a battle.]

My Belgian friend knew his way and we trotted along a raised path among the fields toward Nieuport. It was under fire, but it seemed worth the risk to get close enough so we could see the pontoons being rushed into the water. As we neared Nieuport, however, the firing became much more active and we stopped for second thought. After catching our breath, we decided to pa.s.s through the edge of Nieuport and to go on to the village of Ramscapelle to the south of it. Few sh.e.l.ls seemed to be breaking there.

[Sidenote: Almost under fire.]

Along the cross road we took, alternately running and walking. The Belgian trenches were perhaps a half mile beyond us, and we could make out the tap-tap of the rifle fire which had been only a continuous cracking a mile in the rear. Into this the machine guns cut with a whir.

Spent bullets dropped here and there in the inundated field to the west of us, but the German sh.e.l.l fire must have been right in the trenches.

Somewhere before we reached Ramscapelle we crossed a road with military automobiles going both ways, but my desire to get behind the sheltering buildings of Ramscapelle was too strong at the moment to take it in.

[Sidenote: Fires and explosions in Ramscapelle.]

About a hundred yards from the village there was a house on the edge of a ca.n.a.l, and we stopped behind it, safe from bullet-fire, to catch our breath again. It was as far as we were destined to get. All at once sh.e.l.ls began dropping on the village, and I have not seen sh.e.l.ls drop so fast in so small an area. In the first minute there must have been twenty. Three fires broke out almost at once. Between the explosions we could hear the falling tiles.

The short October day grew unexpectedly dusk and the fires in the village reflected in the water on the fields. After the bombarding had been going on without the least let-up for fully fifteen minutes, a bent old woman, a man perhaps older but less bent, and a younger woman appeared on the road to Furnes just beyond us, hurrying along without once looking back. They were the only people we saw and the destruction of the town looked like the most ruthless piece of vandalism. It had a military purpose, however. The Germans were concentrating an attack on it with the hope of reaching Furnes. They occupied it that night, but were later driven out again. I have learned since some of the villagers remained through that bombardment, and were killed in their houses.

[Sidenote: Destruction of Ramscapelle.]

While we stood sheltered by the house on the ca.n.a.l, speculating as to which one of the houses still standing in Ramscapelle would be hit next, the light from those on fire reflected on the dark, brackish water of the ca.n.a.l, which was running in with the tide. Presently we noticed something in the water, and, stooping down in the twilight, we made out the body of a man face downward. The color of the coat and the little short skirt to it showed it was the body of a German soldier. It pa.s.sed on and was followed by three more before we left. They had been in the water several days.

The fire from the trenches died down at dusk and we made our way back along the empty crossroad. Half way back to the dunes we pa.s.sed a Red Cross motor ambulance, headed toward Ramscapelle. On the seat beside the driver was a young English woman. She was wearing the gray-brown coat and gray-brown puttees of the English soldier. We called out to her we thought the town was empty, but the only answer we got from the speeding ambulance was an a.s.suring wave of the young woman's hand, which was evidently meant to inform us she knew where she was going.

[Sidenote: Ambulances and infantry pa.s.s.]