Not a quiet run. Twice the distant "burr" of the aeroplanes, and we identified the German "Taube" machines over the woods. We turned east towards Jodoigne; to find the trenches empty, our army gone. An armoured car, packed with German infantry, flashed through a cross-road behind us. Once again a waving of arms checked us, and the peasants, half fearful, half excited, warned us of a wood ahead; but we rushed it without incident.
So back to Brussels—to the close gathering of restless crowds under the lamps, the quick glance of suspicious eyes, and rumour, nervous, whispered rumour.
The roads were crowded with fugitives with bundles, cows, and carts. The suburbs hummed uneasily. The evening papers were just appearing, announcing that "the situation is unchanged; the Germans are still along the Meuse"; while every third man on the road had seen them within fifteen miles, and the air had quivered with the approaching guns all day!
The game of secrecy has been played too long. It has deceived nobody and increased the unrest. It is to be hoped that the good sense of the Belgians will forgive it, for the sake of its innocent purpose, when the hour of triumphant return comes.
I left Brussels again late in the evening and worked down towards Louvain, in the dark, meeting the last of the fugitive crowds and the trains of wounded. Leaving the car securely hidden, by by-lanes and cobble-ways I got forward, avoiding the flank of the retreating Belgians, and making for the light of two burning cottages—my last sight of Louvain.
A few small fights were still going on, as sound and sight indicated. Covering parties of Belgians, in small numbers, were heroically sacrificing themselves to protect the strategic retreat on its northward wheel.
Below a slight field-slope, upon the crest of which the flash of rifle fire and the long snake-rattle of the mitrailleuse showed where some section was still making a last stand, I found a shelter. I had made for the west of their certain line of retreat down the fields, and hid uncomfortably in a ditch of bushes, which discovered itself, accidentally and somewhat painfully, in the dark.
Clearly, only a few men were holding the trench above. The whistle of shot, well overhead and to my left, was continuous. Soon there was the buzz of a motor down an invisible lane below, and one of the German cars, fitted with a mitrailleuse-wheel, got into position, to begin raking them from the rear. By means of motors, in this flood of advance, the Germans have moved up light guns and infantry at the speed of cavalry.
A few scattered shots getting nearer told me that the men above me were running back. One, blundering so that I could hear his feet, clearly wounded, stopped running, as the sound showed, near me. I got him after a time into the same ditch as myself. It ran along close to where he fell.
Having cleared this corner, the Germans had evidently something better to do. The firing above and below stopped. After a long wait I managed to get the little trooper, one of a regiment I had chatted with last week, down to an abandoned cottage in the lane below. Only an arm wound; so I left him, bandaged, for the Red Cross to fetch in.