“SMEARED WITH DUST AND BLOOD”
“The din and confusion were indescribable. Through the thick pall of shell smoke Germans were seen on all sides, some emerging hall dazed from cellars and dugouts, their hands above their heads, others dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned tombstones. Machine guns were firing from the houses on the outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above the noise of the rifles.
“Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous enthusiasm. The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in with the Third Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India. The little brown men were dirty but radiant. Kukri in hand they had very thoroughly gone through some houses at the cross-roads on the Rue du Bois and silenced a party of Germans who were making themselves a nuisance there with some machine guns. Riflemen and Gurkhas cheered themselves hoarse.”
CHAPTER XXI
HARROWING SCENES ALONG THE BATTLE LINES
[DRIVING BACK THE GERMANS UNDER FIRE] — [ON THE FIRING LINE] — [AMONG MANGLED HORSES AND MEN] — [GERMAN LOSSES FRIGHTFUL] — [DIXMUDE A PLACE OF DEATH AND HORROR].
Some idea of the ruin wrought day after day as the battle raged in Flanders may be gained from the occasional reports of war correspondents who shared the fortunes of battle.
“The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life,” wrote a correspondent of the London Daily News in October. “Air engines, sea engines, and land engines death-sweep 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 Saturday 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.
POVERTY—HATRED—REVENGE—STARVATION
These Always Survive.
“Actions by armored trains, some of them the most reckless adventures, are attempted daily. Each day accumulates 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 shell 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 shell 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 shells 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 it means early trouble for the infantry.
“Besides us, as we crawl up snuffing the lines like dogs on a scent, grim train-loads 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. Shells 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 pass.”