CHAPTER XLIV
BELGIUM'S GALLANT EFFORT
For more than four years Belgium suffered under the iron heel of the German invaders. One little corner in the far west was occupied by her gallant army, fighting with the utmost courage and a patriotism which has won the admiration of the world under its great King Albert, whose heroic leadership had turned the little commercial nation into a nation of heroes. Conditions of life in the Belgian cities were almost intolerable. The great Belgian Relief Commission, under the direction of Mr. Hoover, had kept the people from starvation, but it could not secure them their rights. They lived in the midst of brutality and injustice.
On Belgian Independence Day at London, Arthur J. Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, made an address in which he commented upon the German treatment of Belgium. In the course of his address he said: "Bitter must be the thought in every Belgian heart of what Belgians in Belgium are now suffering. Let them however, take courage. Let their spirits rise in a mood of profound cheerfulness, for these dark days are not going to last forever, and when they come to a conclusion, when again peace dawns upon this much tormented and cruelly tried world, when Belgium is again free and prosperous, then Belgians, whether they have spent these unhappy years in exile, or, an even harder fate, have spent them in their own country, they will be able to look back upon this time of cruel and unexampled trial, and they will say to themselves, to their children and to their descendants, that Belgium, though her existence as a political entity is less than a century, has within that period shown an example of courage, constancy and virtue to mankind for which all the world should be grateful."
The English Foreign Minister was perhaps not prophesying. He knew something of what was coming. The Great Offensive which was to free Belgium of her German oppressor was already under way. The first move, however, was not upon land, but upon the sea. In the autumn of 1914 the little Belgian port of Zeebrugge, with the neighboring port of Ostend, was captured by the Germans. The Germans, who had already seized the shipbuilding plants at Antwerp, then began to build submarines, and sent them down the canals through Bruges to Zeebrugge and Ostend. From these ports they proceeded to attack the English commerce.
In the spring of 1918 submarine attacks on English shipping were so serious that England was using every possible effort to destroy these piratical craft, and it was determined to make an attempt to block the entrances to the canals at Zeebrugge and at Ostend, by sinking old ships in the channels.
The expedition took place during the night of April 22d, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the expedition. These were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis and Vindictive. The Vindictive carried storming parties to destroy the stone mole at Zeebrugge; the remaining five cruisers were filled with concrete, and it was intended that they should be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. A large force of monitors and small fast craft accompanied the expedition. An observer thus describes the heroic exploit:
The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead as she drove through the water rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing-Commander Brock, without which, acknowledged the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted. A northeast wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships. Beyond it was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious.
It was not until the Vindictive, with bluejackets and marines standing ready for landing, was close upon the mole, that the wind lulled and came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward, There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells. Wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns, and machine guns along the mole. The batteries ashore woke to life.
It was in a gale of shelling that the Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot-high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor, and signaled to the Daffodil to shove her stern in. The Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise.
The fire was intense while the ships plunged and rolled beside the mole in the seas, the Vindictive, with her greater draft, jarring against the foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries on shore. Captain Carpenter conned the Vindictive from the open bridge until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered was it.
The officer of the Iris, which was in trouble ahead of the Vindictive, described Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The Vindictive was fitted along her port side with a high, false deck, from which ran eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and demolition parties were to land. The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines, waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge. Captain Hallahan, who commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The word for the assault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed.
The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a passage across the crashing and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine-guns which swept its length, and a further drop of some sixteen feet to the surface of the mole itself. Many were killed and more wounded as they crowded up the gangways, but nothing hindered the orderly and speedy landing by every gangway. The lower deck was a shambles, as the commander made the round of the ship, yet the wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour.
The Iris had trouble of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant-Commander Bradford, and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast, till each was killed, and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away, and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.
[Illustration: Layout of harbor; North sea at top, with lighthouse, quay
and wireless station. Foreground shows harbor facilities and submarine
pens.]
ZEEBRUGGE HARBOR, BLOCKED BY BRITISH
The Iris was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the Vindictive, which suffered very heavily from fire. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed, and three officers and 103 men wounded.
The storming parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than an intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flames, or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole in search of the enemy destroyed several machine gun emplacements but not a single prisoner awarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole.
The object of the fighting on the mole was in large part to divert the enemy's attention while the work of blocking the canals was being accomplished.
Of this operation the official narrative says: "The Thetis came first steaming into a tornado of shells from great batteries ashore. All her crew save a remnant who remained to steam her in and sink her, already had been taken off her by a ubiquitous motor launch. The remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road to the Intrepid and Iphigenia which followed. She cleared a string of armed barges, which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but had the ill-fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense which flanks it on the shore side. The propeller gathered in the net and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off and found herself in the channel again, still some hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal in practically a sinking condition. As she lay she signaled invaluable directions to others, and her commander blew charges and sank it. Motor launches took off her crew. The Intrepid, smoking like a volcano, and with all her guns blazing, followed. Her motor launch had failed to get alongside, outside the harbor, and she had men enough for anything. Straight into the canal she steered, her smoke blowing back from her into the Iphigenia's eyes so that the latter was blinded, and going a little wild, ran into the dredger, with her barge moored beside it, which lay at the western arm of the canal. She was not clear though, and entered the canal, pushing the barge before her.
"It was then that a shell hit the steam connections of her whistle and the escape of steam which followed drove off some of the smoke, and let her see what she was doing. Lieutenant Carter, commanding the Intrepid, placed the nose of his ship neatly on the mud of the western bank, ordered his crew away, and blew up his ship by switches in the chart room. Lieutenant Leake, commanding the Iphigenia, beached her according to arrangement on the eastern side, blew her up, saw her drop nicely across the canal, and left her with her engines still going to hold her in position till she should have bedded well down on the bottom. According to the latest reports from air observation the two old ships, with their holds full of concrete, are lying across the canal in a V-position, and it is probable that the work they set out to do has been accomplished and that the canal is effectively blocked."
At Ostend an attempt was also made to block the canal on the same night, but it was unsuccessful owing to a shift of wind which blew away the smoke screen behind which the British craft were acting, and enabled the German gun fire to destroy the flares which had been lit to mark the entrance to the harbor. The cruisers tried to act by guess work, and one of the block ships was sunk, but it was not in a position to obstruct the canal.
On May 9th another attempt was made, and the Vindictive, filled with concrete was sunk in the Ostend channel.
This daring exploit of the English fleet, though it had destroyed the value of Zeebrugge and Ostend as submarine bases, had left the Germans in possession. In September, however, General Foch determined that the time had come to throw his armies against the German forces in the distracted little country. He planned two widely separated thrusts. On the south he sent Pershing against the Germans between the Argonne and the Meuse. They made rapid progress, capturing Montfaucon, Varennes and driving on until they had destroyed the German control of the Paris-Chalons-Verdun Railroad.
This was a serious blow to the Germans, for a further push northward would cut the vital lateral railway connecting the German armies in Belgium and France with those in Alsace-Lorraine. Ludendorf hastened reserves to this front, and the American operation was slowed down. Meanwhile at the other end of the line the Belgians, with General Plumer's Second British Army, suddenly attacked on a front which extended all the way from the canal at Dixmude to the Lys, swept the Germans out of all the famous fighting ground of the Ypres salient, pushed across the Passchendaele Ridge and down into the Flanders plain below.
The situation of the Germans in the Lille regions of the south and also along the Belgian coast became at once dangerous. Once more Ludendorf was compelled to send reserves, and this thrust began to slow up but it was not checked permanently, and the Belgian armies were to move on. While this advance was being conducted the British fleet were bombarding the coastal defenses. The Belgian army, fighting with the utmost spirit under command of King Albert, made a penetration of five miles and captured four thousand prisoners and an immense amount of supplies.
On September 30th they captured the city of Roulers. For ten days there was a consolidation of position by the Allies, but on October 14th they made a furious attack in the general direction of Ghent and Courtrai. Thousands of prisoners and several complete batteries of guns were captured. In this attack British, Belgian and French troops took part, and the troops of the three nations went over the top without preliminary bombardment, taking the enemy by surprise.
On October 15th the news from Flanders showed that the victory was growing in extent, the Allied armies were advancing on a front of about twenty-five miles, and in some places had penetrated the enemy's positions six or seven miles. The Belgians had captured seven thousand prisoners and the British and French about four thousand. In French Flanders the British advanced to a point about three miles west of Lille.
The battle was carried on in a heavy rain which turned the battle-fields into seas of mud; while this hampered the Allied troops it hindered even more the Germans in trying to move away their material through the mired ground of the Flanders Lowland.
On the next day dispatches indicated that a retreat on a tremendous scale in northern Belgium was under way. The Germans were retreating so fast that the Allies lost touch with the enemy. The gallant little Belgian army, assisted by crack British and French troops, had driven the despoilers of its country from a large section which the Germans had occupied since the early days of the war, and had gained positions of such importance as to make it probable that the Germans would have to abandon the entire coast of Belgium.
Moreover, on the south, the city of Lille, with the great mining and manufacturing districts around it, was being left in a salient which was growing deeper every hour and which the enemy could not hope to hold. At certain points the resistance of the Germans was extraordinarily fierce. This was especially true in the region of Thouret. The battle here was from street to street and from house to house. The Germans had placed machine-guns in the windows of houses and cellars and fired murderous streams of bullets into the advancing Belgians but were unable to stop them.
The Belgians fought with a dogged determination such as only troops fighting to regain their outraged country could display. Nothing could stop them. At other points, especially in the northern part of the battle area, the Germans surrendered freely. Many civilians were rescued from the towns and districts captured, and little processions of these were straggling rearward out of range of the guns, and out of the way of the fighting troops. At times liberated Belgian women could see their sons, brothers or husbands going forward into battle. On October 17th the German retreat in Flanders became a rout. The enemy were fleeing rapidly on their entire front. The British entered Lille.
The Germans fled from Ostend and British naval forces were landed there. The Belgian infantry were sweeping up the coast, and Belgian patrols entered Bruges. In the afternoon of the day King Albert of Belgium, and Queen Elizabeth entered Ostend. The splendid fighting of the Belgian troops and their magnificent victory was now attracting universal attention. It was one of the revelations of the war. They were bearing the giant's share of the work of the Allied armies in their own country, and had already liberated territory which more than doubled the area of that part of Belgium which had been in their possession.
With the Belgian coast cleared of invaders it became open to British transports which would afford relief to the whole Allied armies from the resultant decrease in the congestion of the channel ports. On October 19th the progress continued. Zeebrugge was occupied by the Allies, the last Belgian port remaining in German hands.
The Belgian advance continued along the whole line. King Albert entered Bruges. Day after day the advance continued. The reception of the King and Queen of Belgium in the recovered towns was something to remember. In Bruges they rode in amid the tumultuous cheering of the frenzied population. On the central square they were received by the burgomaster with an escort of a solitary gendarme, who had refused to give up his uniform and old-fashioned rifle to the enemy; though fined and imprisoned he had kept their hiding place secret. As he stood there alone with fixed bayonet the King and the Queen shook him by the hand and congratulated him. Greatly moved, he stammered, "It is too great an honor, too great an honor."
And with all this happiness came the happiness arising from the return of the soldiers to the homes from which they had been absent so long, the reunions of husband and wife, of parents and children. Belgium was now to reap the reward for her heroism.