A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium

by Hugh Gibson

When we got back to Antwerp I soon learned that it would be out of the question to get back to Brussels the next day, or perhaps even the day after that. The Belgians were advancing to an enveloping movement and all the surrounding country was to be covered with Belgian troops in an endeavour to deal a smashing blow to the Germans and compel them to bring back more troops from the front in France. Colonel Fairholme asked me to accompany him to the front next morning, and I accepted with an alacrity which startled him.

After dinner I made another excursion into the darkness and told Monsieur de Woeste that there was no prospect of getting back to Brussels the next day. His colleagues, who were there also, impressed upon him the futility of going, and he finally resigned himself to staying, although he kept insisting that he infinitely preferred danger to boredom, which was his lot so long, as he had nothing to do but sit around the hotel.

Friday morning while I was waiting for the Colonel to get ready and was doing my little errands down town, there came a great roaring of a crowd, and the chauffeur, knowing my curiosity, put on steam and spurted down to the boulevards just in time to run into a batch of three hundred German prisoners being brought in. They were a dejected-looking crowd, most of them Landsturm, haggard and sullen. The crowd, mindful of the things the Germans have been doing to this little country, were in no friendly mood, but did nothing violent. There was only a small guard of Belgian Garde Civique to escort the prisoners, but there were no brickbats or vegetables. The people limited themselves to hoots and catcalls and hisses—which were pretty thick. And even this was frowned upon by the authorities. Within a couple of hours the Military Governor had posted a proclamation begging the people of Antwerp to maintain a more dignified attitude and to refrain from any hostile demonstration against other prisoners. This batch was surrounded, and caught at Aerschot, where the Germans are said to have committed all sorts of atrocities for the past three weeks. Among the prisoners was the commanding officer, who was accused of being responsible for a lot of the outrages. He was examined by the military court, which sits for the purpose, and admitted having done most of the things of which he was accused, pleading in his own defence that he had done them only in obedience to superior orders, to which he had protested. The soldiers who made the capture disclaimed a large part of the credit for it on the ground that most of the Germans were drunk and that they were too dazed to get to their arms. Stories of this sort keep piling in from every side.

We got away at eleven to Lierre, where the King has established his headquarters for his movement. The road lay to the southeast and was through country I had not traversed before. The aspect was the same, however—long stretches of destroyed houses and felled trees, barbed-wire entanglements and inundated fields. It is a mournful sight.

Little Lierre was unharmed, and I hope it may remain so. The Grande Place was filled with staff motors, and there was a constant coming and going of motors and motorcycles bearing messengers to and from the field of operations. Headquarters was established in the Hôtel de Ville, which bears on its tower the date 1369—a fine old building, not large, but beautiful.

In the morning a message had come ordering Colonel DuCane back to England. He was out in the field, and we had to wait until he came in to deliver it to him. The King was also away, but we put in our time talking with the officers on duty as to the movement and its progress, and then went out for a stroll around the town. We looked into the old church, and I stopped and bought an officer's forage cap as a souvenir of the place. By the time we had poked around the neighbourhood and inspected the other Sehenswürdigkeiten of the town it was lunch time and we joined an officers' mess in the back room of a little café on the square, and then, to kill time, sat in front of another café and had coffee and a cigar.

We could not get started until Colonel DuCane had returned and received his message, so we sat in front of our little café and growled. It was maddening to waste our time there while the guns were thundering all around us and we knew from the signs of activity at headquarters that big things were toward. After a time a little man, the Senator for the district, came out and asked us into his house, directly across the street from the Hôtel de Ville. It was raining hard and we were ready for a change, so we accepted gladly and were entertained with champagne and cigars to the music of falling rain and booming cannon.

Our Senator was very much down in the mouth about the situation in general and wanted to talk about it. The Colonel told him of the bulletins that had been published in Antwerp as to the progress of the campaign, and as this went on he cheered up visibly minute by minute—whether as a result of the good news or the champagne, I don't know.

The Colonel was called away after a time to talk to Lord Kitchener over the telephone. Kitchener keeps himself informed directly as to the progress of operations and the knowledge that he may drop in over the telephone at any minute gives his officers a very comforting feeling that they are not forgotten.

Finally, after dark, Colonel DuCane and Captain Ferguson came in, and we got under way. It was too late to go forward with hopes of seeing anything, but it was evident that things would be as hot as ever the next day and that I could not hope to get my charges back to Brussels. Accordingly the Colonel's invitation was extended and accepted, and we turned back toward Antwerp considerably disappointed.