From the Trenches: Louvain to the Aisne, the First Record of an Eye-Witness

by Geoffrey Winthrop Young

The crowd of carts and cars that accumulated at last proved too much even for the patience of the Gardes, and we all crushed through and over.

Nowhere had the news been received; everywhere the blind is still kept down. It is a dangerous game to play, with men raging as I have heard them the last few days. But the result may justify it.

It is no good recalling the shadow moments of pain and tragedy that cover like a cloud even the small corner which one man may see of this destruction and panic called war.

Every event is out of proportion, impossible. The dead body one stumbles over is no more real or important than the bad-mannered shop-keeper who is doing his best as a civic sentinel. One thinks of nothing but the chance of the next fantastic incident; and if it comes as a death or as a child crying, it seems equally serious, equally foolish, equally without origin or relation to the next event.

In the course of these two days, started so peacefully, it will be seen that we have been involved in the French retreat on the west, in the Prussian flood and the dramatic evacuation in the centre, in a corner of the last battle at Louvain, on the east, in the evening, the morning entry of the enemy to occupy Brussels, and finally in the east of the flight to the south. If we put the facts of the last few days together, so far as we know them, without going outside official information, this seems to be about the position:

The German northern army, profiting perhaps even more than we did by the check at Liége, had two possible alternatives, supposing their objective to be Brussels, and the "hole" on the frontier by Mons and Charleroi. And Brussels was necessary, to re-affirm their credit in Berlin.

The first alternative was through by Gembloux, Quatre Bras, and Genappe, avoiding the forest of Soignes. This would have struck the weak link between the French advanced force, in the neighbourhood of Sombreffe, and the Belgian lines from Wavre to Diest.

The second was to push north, along the frontier, to Hasselt, and break through the Belgian left before it could be reinforced by the French, threatening both Antwerp and Brussels.

This was their choice. They were aware that the French could not push up rapidly enough to establish the link firmly, or in great enough numbers to be able to reinforce the menaced left wing.

The French, nevertheless, did some very fine marches in order to profit by the splendid Belgian resistance at Liége and Haelen. But it was too late for the change of plan. When I was among them, at Mazy and Gembloux and Perwez, it seemed as if they were in time to force the Germans to take the more southerly line, and face them and the Belgian arc on their north. The Germans knew better. Under screen of their scattered Uhlans, here and there all over the country, forcing the Belgians, always in inferior numbers, to expand and contract as their attacks were located, they moved a far larger force than was estimated across the Meuse. Behind their pause at Liége they converted the hastily mobilised inferior troops, whom the Belgians had learned to despise, into the engine of magnificent equipment and pace that is now launched across Belgium.