IV. ON THE YSER
Our columns started at 4 a.m., while it was still quite dark, but the roads were good in spite of the rain which had been falling incessantly all night.
The route was through Warken, Zarren, and Eessen, with Dixmude as its final point. The first battalion of the 2nd Regiment and the three Belgian batteries of the Pontus group brought up the rear. The advance was hampered by the usual congestion of the roads, refugees fleeing before the invaders, dragging bundles containing all their worldly goods. These miserable beings seemed to be moving along mechanically, their legs the only part of them that showed any vitality. They halted by the roadside, making way for us, staring at us dully, as if they had left their souls behind them with all the dear familiar things of their past lives. Our men called out to them as they passed: "Keep your hearts up. We'll come back."
They made no answer. It was still raining, and the water was streaming off the great-coats. Near Eessen we left Commander de Kerros with the second battalion of the 1st Regiment, to hold the roads of Vladsloo, Clercken, and Roulers; the third battalion of the 2nd Regiment, under Commander Mauros, pushed on in the direction of Woumen, to bar the way to Ypres. We had a fine front, though the Admiral thought it rather too wide for our strength. The four other battalions and the machine-gun company entered Dixmude about noon, and at once took up a position behind the Yser after detaching a strong outpost guard on the north, near the village of Beerst, on the Ostend road, by the side of which runs a little light railway for local transport. The Admiral, who had been anxiously looking out for some undulation in this desperately flat landscape where he could place his artillery, found a suitable spot at last to the south of the Chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, half-way to Eessen. He chose the chapel itself for his own headquarters. All these arrangements were made immediately, and the men had scarcely got into their quarters, when they were sent out with spades and picks, together with a company of the Belgian Engineers, to put the outskirts of the town into a state of defence. They had to be content with measures of the greatest urgency alone, for the enemy was pressing in upon us and creeping up to Dixmude. A few shrapnel shells had already fallen upon the town, the inhabitants of which began to decamp hastily. However, the railway was still intact, and we were expecting the last trains of material from Antwerp. "At all costs"—this is a phrase that recurs very often in orders from the Staff, and one which the brigade accepted unmurmuringly—the line was to be protected and the enemy held. Two, three, trains passed, and strange ones they were. They continued to run in until night; the fires were covered up; the engine-drivers never whistled; all that was heard was the muffled pant of the engine, like a great sigh rising from the devastated plains.
LA GRAND' PLACE, DIXMUDE
(From a picture by M. Léon Cassel)
That same evening our outposts on the Eessen road were attacked by an armoured car and 200 German cyclists; they repulsed the attack; but we were really too much exposed in our position. The Admiral decided that it was imprudent to maintain such a wide front with troops numerically so weak, but which it would take a long time to move off. At Dixmude, on the other hand, where the Yser begins to curve towards the coast, and forms a re-entrant confronting the enemy, there was a position which would permit of a concentric fire from our artillery, particularly favourable to the defensive attitude we were to assume. The considerations which had forced us to extend our front had no longer any weight; all the transports from Antwerp had got in in time. The safety of the Belgian army was assured; its material had reached it, and, with the exception of certain units which had been made prisoners in the evacuation of Antwerp or had been driven into Holland, and the divisions which continued our line to the North Sea, it was in shelter behind the Yser, in touch with the English corps and the army of General d'Urbal. The brigade might therefore very properly concentrate its defensive round Dixmude.
The Belgian command, which had passed into the hands of General Michel, readily accepted these arguments, and the operation was agreed upon for the next day. "The Boches were there twenty-four hours after us," says a sailor's letter. "We hoped they were eight kilometres from the town. We were all dead tired, but standing firm." The evacuation of these dangerous outposts on flat, open ground, where scattered farms, occasional stacks of straw, and the poplars along the roadside were the only available cover, was carried out with very trifling loss, and we at once organised our defences round Dixmude.