All our men re-entered the corn-mill. The order for the general retreat arrived. It was four o’clock p. m.
With heavy hearts, those brave troops who had fought like lions and who were determined to the last sacrifice leave their fortress of one day cast a last look on the smoking ruins of the town, on the corn-mill, which in its turn begins to burn (the fire was set during the defence by a french soldier), send a last and pious thought to all the gallant heroes who have just bravely fallen for their country, and the river is crossed.
Twenty-two officers and a large number of soldiers were missing at the roll call on the left bank.
The German attack attempts again the passage of the Yser, but it is annihilated. The artillery thunders, all the time, but the infantry holds, and will hold till the end.
Thus were the last spasms of the battle of the Yser, and the trench warfare begins.
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The Germans occupied Dixmude and the corn-mill. Our first line was staked out on the West of the Yser. From one end to the other, positions were organized, fortified and armed according to the constant progress of the science of the new war, which transformed the sectors into real fortresses, whose smallest corners hid instruments of death.
The corn-mill did not escape German organization. Strong, it was already, but it was rendered undestroyable. The walls were used as lock ups for tons of concrete in the midst of which were disposed a series of shelters and posts of observation, which had nothing to fear even from the most enormous projectiles.
The corn-mill was a source of great suffering to our troops, not only by the watchmen, but by the minenwerfers that it sheltered. Our artillery made many desperate attempts to attack it. It only managed to round its cubic forms and to pulverize certain points of its bulk, but that was all.
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