A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium

by Hugh Gibson

From Malines we made back along the northern side of the canal, in an endeavour to find the headquarters of the ——th Division. We went through a little village where all the inhabitants were standing in the road, listening to the cannonading, and spun out upon an empty and suspiciously silent country road. A little way out we found a couple of dead horses which the thrifty peasants had already got out and skinned. I didn't like the looks of it, and in a minute the Colonel agreed that he thought it did not look like a road behind the lines, but our little staff officer was cock-sure that he knew just what he was talking about, and ordered the chauffeur to go ahead. Then we heard three sharp toots on the horn of the car behind—the signal to stop and wait. And it came pulling up alongside with an inquiry as to what we meant by "barging" along this sort of a road which likely as not would land us straight inside the enemy's lines. There was a spirited discussion as to whether we should go ahead or go back and strike over through Rymenam, when we heard a shell burst over the road about half a mile ahead, and then saw a motor filled with Belgian soldiers coming back toward us full tilt. The Colonel stopped them and learned that they had been out on a reconnaissance with a motor-cyclist to locate the German lines, which were found to be just beyond where the shell had burst, killing the motor-cyclist. It would have been a little too ignominious for us to have gone bowling straight into the lines and get taken prisoners. We turned around and left that road to return no more that way. We got about half-way up to Rymenam when we met some Belgian officers in a motor, who told us that a battery of the big French howitzers, which had just gone into action for the first time, were in a wood near H——. We turned around once more, and made for H—— by way of Malines. We found the headquarters of the ——th Division, and went in and watched the news come in over the field telephone and telegraph, and by messengers on motor-cycles, bicycles and horses straight from the field. The headquarters was established in a little roadside inn about half a mile outside the town, and was as orderly as a bank. Officers sat at the various instruments and took notes of the different reports as they came in. Reports were discussed quickly but quietly, and orders sent out promptly but without confusion. The maps were kept up to the minute by changing the little flags to show the positions of the different troops right at the minute. There was telephone communication with the forts, and several times they were ordered to pour fire into a certain spot to cover an advance or a retreat of parts of the Belgian forces, and, at other times, to cease firing, so as to let Belgian troops cross or occupy the exact spot they had been bombarding. It was a wonderful sight to watch, and it was hard to realise that this was merely a highly scientific business of killing human beings on a large scale. It was so business-like and without animus, that to anyone not knowing the language or conditions, it might have passed as a busy day in a war office commissary when ordering supplies and giving orders for shipment.

Just outside the headquarters was one of the fine German kitchen wagons with two fine Norman horses which had pulled it all the way from Germany. It had been stationed in the grounds of a château not far away, and three men of its crew were hard at work getting a meal when a little Belgian soldier with two weeks' growth of beard waltzed into the garden, shot one of the men dead and captured the other two. He disarmed them, put ropes around their necks and drove the kitchen to headquarters in triumph. He was proud as punch of his exploit, and, for that matter, so was everybody else around the place.

In a field of turnips a couple of hundred yards away from the headquarters were the howitzers. There were three of them in a row with three ammunition wagons. They had been sent here only a few days ago, and they were promptly put into action. They were planted here, slightly inside the range of the guns from the outer forts, and were able to drop shells six miles from where we stood, or about five miles outside the range of the fort guns. They toss a shell about two feet long, filled with deadly white powder, six miles in ten seconds, and when the shell strikes anything, "it thoes rocks at yeh!" as the darkey said about our navy guns. The battery was planted down behind a little clump of pines, and was dropping shells into a little village where there was a considerable force of Germans about to be attacked. The Germans must have been puzzled by this development, for they had counted on being able to advance safely up to the range of the forts, feeling sure that the Belgians had no powerful field guns of this sort.

We were introduced to the officers commanding the battery, and watched their work for nearly two hours. One of the officers was Count Guy d'Oultremont, adjutant of the Court, whom I had known in Brussels. He was brown as a berry, had lost a lot of superfluous flesh, and was really a fine-looking man. He had been in Namur, and had got away with the Belgian troops who went out the back door into France and came home by ship.

After we had been watching a little while, an aeroplane came circling around, evidently to spot the place where these deadly cannon were. It cruised around for some time in vain, but finally crossed straight overhead. As soon as we were located, the machine darted away to spread the news, so that the big German guns could be trained on us and silence the battery; but the Belgians were Johnny-at-the-rat-hole again, and he was winged by rifle fire from a crowd of soldiers who were resting near the headquarters. They killed the observer and wounded the pilot himself, to say nothing of poking a hole in the oil tank. The machine volplaned to earth a few hundred yards from where we were, and the pilot was made prisoner. The machine was hauled back to the village and shipped on the first outgoing train to Antwerp as a trophy.

We were leaving the battery and were slipping and sliding through the cabbages on our way back to the road, when we met the King on foot, accompanied only by an aide-de-camp, coming in for a look at the big guns. He stopped and spoke to us and finally settled down for a real talk, evidently thinking that this was as good a time as any other he was likely to find in the immediate future.

After talking shop with the two colonels, he turned to me for the latest gossip. He asked me about the story that the German officers had drunk his wine at the Palace in Laeken. I told him that it was generally accepted in Brussels, and gave him my authority for the yarn. He chuckled a little and then said, in his quiet way, with a merry twinkle: "You know I never drink anything but water." He cogitated a minute and then, with an increased twinkle, he added: "And it was not very good wine!" He seemed to think that he had quite a joke on the Germans.

As we talked, the sound of firing came from the German lines not far away, and shrapnel began falling in a field on the other side of the road. The Germans were evidently trying to locate the battery in that way. Most of the shrapnel burst in the air and did no damage, but some of it fell to the ground before bursting and sent up great fountains of the soft black earth with a cloud of gray smoke with murky yellow splotches in it. It was not a reassuring sight, and I was perfectly willing to go away from there, but being a true diplomat, I remembered that the King ranked me by several degrees in the hierarchy, and that he must give the sign of departure. Kings seem powerless to move at such times, however, so we stayed and talked while the nasty things popped. His Majesty and I climbed to a dignified position on a pile of rubbish, whence we could get a good view up and down the road, and see the French guns which were in action again.

A little later Ferguson, who was standing not far away, got hit with a little sliver and had a hole punched in the shoulder of his overcoat. It stopped there, however, and did not hurt him in the least. He looked rather astonished, pulled the little stranger from the hole it had made, looked at it quizzically, and then put it in his pocket and went on watching the French guns. I think he would have been quite justified in stopping the battle and showing his trophy to everybody on both sides.

The King was much interested in all the news from Brussels, how the people were behaving, what the Germans were doing, whether there were crowds on the streets, and how the town felt about the performances of the army.