The Germans, advancing en masse, are constantly described as firing from the hip. In front of the trench which I visited, the ground was cut up by rifle-bullets in a continuous line, a few feet short of the raised bank. Towards the end of the hour I spent there, came a sudden ten minutes of furious firing. The hail of bullets whipped against the far side bank in travelling waves of rustling sound, like the passing of sharp gusts over a moor.
Later.
The air is yellow and heavy from the continuous bombardment of the past days. Sudden showers of rain, out of cloudless skies, come from the same cause. The guns began again to-night.
Ostend, Monday.
The Belgian Army was active this morning. Already at dawn as I passed out of Antwerp through the wire entanglements and small inundations about the military camps, they were on the move for another attack. The guns were in action to the south of us.
The country, in the line of Ghent, is now free. It was possible to travel almost to the French frontier before the alarm of Uhlans began. But the villages, populous and filled with panic last week, are now half deserted and melancholy. The refugees pour aimlessly to the coast and back again, according to the rumours. The railways run, advancing and retreating, according to the movements of the enemy. In the morning trains may run straight, in the evening make a cautious loop. A curious situation, significant of the double occupation of the "open" territory.
I wished to clear up some of the mystery enveloping the northern end of the French frontier. I therefore passed through Ghent westward. Last week I left a German cavalry column disappearing into the silence of "no official news" into the neighbourhood of Courtrai. This afternoon I met news of them, or their like, returning in the same quarter, as I made a hurried run to the border. It was near Ypres that the peasants met us with warnings "The Germans have been sighted, and are expected here."
From a safe retreat, in a wood on rising ground, we watched a small line of German wagons, probably of wounded, winding into and out at the other end of the short village street. It was accompanied and followed by cavalry and a few cars.
It has been heartening to see any Germans facing in the right direction, before I descended once again upon Ostend.