The combat had been going on for forty minutes. The Cyclists must have reached Tremeloo. There were still the wounded ones to look after. Berlaymont and I got down and picked up six or seven of them. We placed them on the chests, on the wings, on the platform, at the back, and even on the hood. This exasperated the Boches, who fired on us furiously. We now made off, but on the Tremeloo road, we came across about twenty poor wounded men, dragging themselves along in the most lamentable way. They stretched out their hands to us, beseeching to be picked up. It was impossible to abandon them. Six volunteers of the Cyclist rear-guard offered their services. They discovered a cart and an old horse which, by some miracle, had remained among the ruins of a farm and, whilst they were doing this, the machine-gun received certain indispensable repairs. The car then started once more towards Werchter, followed by the cart transformed into an ambulance. About one hundred yards in front of the bridge, a wounded man was lying across the road. He begged to be picked up at once. We fastened him to the platform and thought no more about him, for the balls were raining down again. The Boches had crossed the bridge and we had to drive them back, so that we could pick up the wounded men. We advanced slowly, giving our enemies a hellish fire. They were running from hedge to hedge, quite near to us.
Lieutenant de Menten, who had been taken prisoner at the beginning of the action, and was freed later on, told us about this part of the fight. The Germans, two battalions and a squadron strong, dragged him along with them in the pursuit, and we came very near freeing him ourselves. For a short time, he was surrounded by the dead and he had to lie down flat in a ditch, in order to avoid sharing the fate of his keepers. We were only one hundred yards away. We had painted a gigantic 7 on our car, out of sheer bravado. A German officer told him that evening that that "cursed Number Seven" had killed more than two hundred men in an hour.
Our provision of 4500 cartridges was coming to an end though. We began to fall back a little, especially as the balls were now coming from right and left. There were no longer any wounded men on the road, as our brave Carabineers had worked well.
"Good Heavens!" we suddenly exclaimed "and what about the man we picked up and put at the back of the motor-car?" When our last volley was fired we visited him, expecting to find him in a piteous state. Miraculously, he had not a single scratch more than when we had picked him up, and yet the back of the car was riddled with marks of bullets. What a piece of good luck for him and, as for us, our men were all there; we had not lost one.
During that second sortie from Antwerp, we had magnificent chances of distinguishing ourselves every day. On the 10th of September, for instance, we started from Rhode St. Pierre with some Pioneers and, slipping between German posts and patrols, we reached Cumptich, near Tirlemont, about ten miles behind the enemy's lines. Whilst the Pioneers were destroying the railway line from Louvain to Liége, we kept a lookout on the road. A red auto came along. It was a Pipe, 12 horse-power, 1912, driven by a German soldier, and there were two conceited-looking officers in it. Berlaymont seized his carbine and, at a hundred yards' distance, fired twice. Each ball hit an officer straight. The car stopped short and the chauffeur held up his arms. We rushed forward, our Brownings in our hands. The two officers were on the floor of the car, with their heads open.
"What a pity," said Berlaymont, regretfully, "they have made a mess of the leather!"
After securing the chauffeur, we started along the road in our car. On approaching the sentinels, we called out to them: "Come here, or you are dead men."
Not one of the five prisoners we made attempted to defend himself. As soon as they saw the armoured car, they threw down their weapons and put their hands up. Some of them knelt down and asked for pardon. On returning, our captured car came to a stand-still and the prisoner chauffeur repaired it with the most obsequious eagerness. The climax was that, just as we were setting off again, we heard a voice calling out: "Stop, stop, you have forgotten me." It was one of our prisoners, who had got down while the car was being repaired and whom we had not missed.
That same day, the 10th of September, I had two more big fights, and was able to advance as far as Blauwput, a suburb of Louvain. Unfortunately, this cost me the life of Corporal Royer, a very brave man who had already had honourable mention in his Division. In the afternoon, we had the Pellenberg fight, where the violent resistance of the German Marine Fusiliers stopped our progress.
Until we reached the Yser, my car was engaged on an average three times a day. It would be impossible to tell of all our skirmishes, so I will only give the most interesting episodes.