The Battles in Belgium
[An Associated 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 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.
"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 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. 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."
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 shells. 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 shell 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 shells, and the sight of crying children among them was most pathetic.
"Dixmude was the objective of the German attack, and shells 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 shell 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 débris presented a shocking spectacle.
"Eventually, we got into Dixmude itself, and every time a shell came crashing among the roofs we thought our end had come. The Hôtel de Ville (town hall) was a sad sight. The roof was completely riddled by shell, 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 passing."
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 shelling 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 passed 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.
Flanders and Northern France—How the Battle Line Has Changed (Up to Jan. 1, 1915) Since the War Began.