“Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous enthusiasm. The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in with the Third Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India. The little brown men were dirty but radiant. Kukri in hand they had very thoroughly gone through some houses at the cross-roads on the Rue du Bois and silenced a party of Germans who were making themselves a nuisance there with some machine guns. Riflemen and Gurkhas cheered themselves hoarse.”
CHAPTER XXI
HARROWING SCENES ALONG THE BATTLE LINES
[DRIVING BACK THE GERMANS UNDER FIRE] — [ON THE FIRING LINE] — [AMONG MANGLED HORSES AND MEN] — [GERMAN LOSSES FRIGHTFUL] — [DIXMUDE A PLACE OF DEATH AND HORROR].
Some idea of the ruin wrought day after day as the battle raged in Flanders may be gained from the occasional reports of war correspondents who shared the fortunes of battle.
“The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life,” wrote a correspondent of the London Daily News in October. “Air engines, sea engines, and land engines death-sweep this desolate country, vertically, horizontally, and transversely. Through it the frail little human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled, ordered here and there, sleeping where they can, never washing, and dying unnoticed. A friend may find himself firing on a friendly force, and few are to blame.
“Thursday the Germans were driven back over the Yser; Friday they secured a footing again, and Saturday they were again hurled back. Now a bridge blown up by one side is repaired by the other; it is again blown up by the first, or left as a death trap till the enemy is actually crossing.
POVERTY—HATRED—REVENGE—STARVATION