A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium

by Hugh Gibson

Les Américains sont arrivés! Les Américains sont arrivés!

His father told him to be quiet, but he was perfectly happy and clung to the side of the car as long as we stayed, his eyes shining with joy, convinced that things were going to be all right somehow.

About half way around the ring of boulevards we came to burning houses. The outer side of the boulevard was a hundred feet or so from the houses, so the motor was safe, but it was pretty hot and the cinders were so thick that we had to put on our goggles. A lot of the houses were still burning, but most of them were nothing but blackened walls with smouldering timbers inside. Many of the front doors had been battered open in order to start the fires or to rout out the people who were in hiding.

We came to a German ammunition wagon, half upset against a tree, where it had been hurled when the horses had turned to run away. The tongue was broken and wrenched out. Near by were the two horses, dead and swollen until their legs stood out straight. Then we began to see more ghastly sights—poor civilians lying where they had been shot down as they ran—men and women—one old patriarch lying on his back in the sun, his great white beard nearly hiding his swollen face. All sorts of wreckage scattered over the street, hats and wooden shoes, German helmets, swords and saddles, bottles and all sorts of bundles which had been dropped and abandoned when the trouble began. For three-quarters of a mile the boulevard looked as though it had been swept by a cyclone. The Porte de Tirlemont had evidently been the scene of particularly bloody business. The telegraph and trolley wires were down; dead men and horses all over the square; the houses still burning. The broad road we had traveled when we went to Tirlemont was covered with wreckage and dead bodies.

Some bedraggled German soldiers came out from under the gate and examined our passes. They were nervous and unhappy and shook their heads gloomily over the horrors through which they were passing. They said they had had hardly a minute's sleep for the past three nights. Their eyes were bloodshot and they were almost too tired to talk. Some of them were drunk—in the sodden stage, when the effect begins to wear off. They told us we could proceed in safety as far as the station, where we would find the headquarters of the commanding officer. Here we could leave the motor and learn how far we could safely go. This crowd varied the wording a little by saying that the Belgians were all dogs and that these particular dogs were being driven out, as they should be, that all that part of town was being cleared of people, ordered to leave their homes and go to Brussels or some other town, so that the destruction of Louvain could proceed systematically. We thought at the time that they were exaggerating what was being done, but were enlightened before we had gone much farther.

We continued down the boulevard for a quarter of a mile or so till we came to the station. Sentries came out and looked through our passes again. We parked the motor with a number of German military cars in the square and set off on foot down the Rue de la Station, which we had admired so much when we had driven down its length, just ten days before.

The houses on both sides were either partially destroyed or smouldering. Soldiers were systematically removing what was to be found in the way of valuables, food, and wine, and then setting fire to the furniture and hangings. It was all most businesslike. The houses are substantial stone buildings, and fire will not spread from one to another. Therefore the procedure was to batter down the door of each house, clean out what was to be saved, then pile furniture and hangings in the middle of the room, set them afire, and move on to the next house.

It was pretty hot, but we made our way down the street, showing our passes every hundred feet or so to soldiers installed in comfortable armchairs, which they had dragged into the gutter from looted houses, till we came to a little crossing about half way to the Hôtel de Ville. Here we were stopped by a small detachment of soldiers, who told us that we could go no farther; that they were clearing civilians out of some houses a little farther down the street, and that there was likely to be firing at any time.

The officer in command spoke to us civilly and told us to stick close to him so that we could know just what we ought to do at any time. He was in charge of the destruction of this part of the town and had things moving along smartly. His men were firing some houses near by and he stood outside smoking a rank cigar and looking on gloomily.

We exchanged remarks with him in German for a few minutes, I limping along behind the more fluent Pousette and Bulle. Then I said something in an aside to Blount, and the officer broke into the conversation in perfectly good English. He turned out to be a volunteer officer from Hamburg, who had spent some thirty years in England and was completely at home in the language.