On the Square, we picked up the Belgian flag, which had been floating at the Municipal Building. It had been snatched down by the Prussians, torn and dragged through the mud. We had it put up again, just as it was, and we saluted it with deep respect, little thinking then that it would soon be the emblem of our poor country, torn, violated, and trampled under foot by a barbarous soldiery.
On our return, we took the tragic path where our indomitable Cyclists had held out so heroically. The broken bicycles, the dead bodies of our "diables noirs" and of their adversaries, proved their courage, and the punishment they had inflicted on these Germans, particularly on those of the 17th Dragoons, that famous regiment, composed of the flower of the Mecklenburg nobility.
A little farther on, we met some soldiers carrying a ladder, on which a sub-officer of our Lancers was lying. He had been wounded in the knee. "I have spent a terrible night," he said, with a smile on his lips. "I was wounded and lying in a beet-root field by the side of a German sub-officer. After insulting me, he fired on me three times with his revolver, and lodged his last ball in his own head. He is still there in the field."
How long this walk back seemed to us! We would willingly have closed our eyes. We could not help thinking of the mothers, sisters, and families of all those we had just seen there, men who had died for their country, victims of a sanguinary, brutal, perjured despot. The thought of these poor families threw a sombre veil over our pride in the memory of our first victory!
The Budingen Combat
(August 18, 1914)
Death of Lieutenant Count W. d'Ursel. By Colonel de Schietere de Lophem, Commander of the 4th Lancers