Chapter VII The Last Stand Of The Belgians
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During the first two and a half months of the war I was a wanderer in France, covering many hundreds of miles in zig-zag journeys between Nancy and the west coast, always on the move, backwards and forwards, between the lines of the French and British armies, and watching with a tireless though somewhat haggard interest the drama of a great people engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the most formidable army in the world. I had been in the midst of populations in flight, armies in retreat, and tremendous movements of troops hurled forward to new points of strategical importance. Now and again I had come in touch with the British army and had seen something of the men who had fought their way down from Mons to Meaux, but for the most part my experience had been with the French, and it was the spirit of France which I had done my best to interpret to the English people.
Now I was to see war, more closely and intimately than before, in another nation; and I stood with homage in my heart before the spirit of Belgium and that heroic people who, when I came upon them, had lost all but the last patch of territory, but still fought, almost alone, a tenacious, bloody and unending battle against the Power which had laid low their cities, mangled their ancient beauties, and changed their little land of peaceful industry into a muck-heap of slaughter and destruction.
Even in France I had this vision of the ruin of a nation, and saw its victims scattered. Since that day when I came upon the first trainload of Belgian soldiers near Calais, weary as lame dogs after their retreat, I had seen an interminable procession of fugitives from that stricken country and heard from them the tale of Alost, Louvain, Termonde and other towns where only horror dwelt above incinerated stones and scraps of human flesh. The fall of Antwerp resounded into France, and its surrender after words of false hope that it would never fall shook the soul of the French people with a great dismay. It was idle to disguise the importance of this German victory at the time when France, with every nerve strained and with England by her side, could hardly stem back the tide of those overflowing armies which had been thrust across the Marne but now pressed westward towards Calais with a smashing strength. The capture of Antwerp would liberate large numbers of the enemy's best troops. Already, within a day of this disaster to the Allied armies, squadrons of German cavalry swept across the frontiers into France, forcing their way rapidly through Lille and Armentières towards Béthune and La Bassée, cutting lines which had already been cut and then repaired, and striking terror into French villages which had so far escaped from these hussars of death. As a journalist, thwarted at every turn by the increasing severity of military orders for correspondent catching, the truth was not to be told at any cost. I had suspected the doom of Antwerp some days before its fate was sealed, and I struck northward to get as near as possible to the Belgian frontier. The nearest I could get was Dunkirk, and I came in time to see amazing scenes in that port of France. They were scenes which, even now as I write months afterwards, stir me with pity and bring back to my imagination an immense tragedy of history.
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The town of Dunkirk, from which I went out to many adventures in the heart of war, so that for me it will always hold a great memory, was on that day in October a place of wild chaos, filled with the murmur of enormous crowds, and with the steady tramp of innumerable feet which beat out a tragic march. Those weary footsteps thumping the pavements and the cobble-stones, made a noise like the surging of waves on a pebble beach—a queer, muffled, shuffling sound, with a rhythm in it which stupefied one's senses if one listened to it long. I think something of this agony of a people in flight passed into my own body and brain that day. Some sickness of the soul took possession of me, so that I felt faint and overcome by black dejection. There was a physical evil among those vast crowds of Belgians who had come on foot, or in any kind of vehicle, down the big, straight roads which led to France, and now struggled down towards the docks, where thousands were encamped. From their weariness and inevitable dirtiness, from the sweat of their bodies, and the tears that had dried upon their cheeks, from the dust and squalor of bedraggled clothes, there came to one's nostrils a sickening odour. It was the stench of a nation's agony. Poor people of despair! There was something obscene and hideous in your miserable condition. Standing among your women and children, and your old grandfathers and grandmothers, I was ashamed of looking with watchful and observant eyes. There were delicate ladies with their hats awry and their hair dishevelled, and their beautiful clothes bespattered and torn, so that they were like the drabs of the slums and stews. There were young girls who had been sheltered in convent schools, now submerged in the great crowd of fugitives, so utterly without the comforts of life that the common decencies of civilization could not be regarded, but gave way to the unconcealed necessities of human nature. Peasant women, squatting on the dock-sides, fed their babes as they wept over them and wailed like stricken creatures. Children with scared eyes, as though they had been left alone in the horror of darkness, searched piteously for parents who had been separated from them in the struggle for a train or in the surgings of the crowds. Young fathers of families shouted hoarsely for women who could not be found. Old women, with shaking heads and trembling hands, raised shrill voices in the vain hope that they might hear an answering call from sons or daughters. Like people who had escaped from an earthquake to some seashore where by chance a boat might come for them all, these Belgian families struggled to the port of Dunkirk and waited desperately for rescue. They were in a worse plight than shipwrecked people, for no ship of good hope could take them home again. Behind them the country lay in dust and flames, with hostile armies encamped among the ruins of their towns.
For a little while I left these crowds and escaped to the quiet sanctuary of a restaurant in the centre of the town. I remember that some English officers came in and stared at me from their table with hard eyes, suspicious of me as a spy, or, worse still, as a journalist. In those days, having to dodge arrest at every turn, I had a most unpatriotic hatred of those British officers whose stern eyes gimletted my soul. They seemed to me so like the Prussian at his worst. Afterwards, getting behind this mask of harness, by the magic of official papers, I abandoned my dislike and saw only the virtue of our men. I remember also that I ate at table opposite a pretty girl, with a wanton's heart, who prattled to me, because I was an Englishman, as though no war had come to make a mockery of love-in-idleness. I stood up from the table, upsetting a glass so that it broke at the stem. Outside the restaurant was the tramp of another multitude. But the rhythm of those feet was different from the noise I had heard all day. It was sharper and more marked. I guessed at once that many soldiers were passing by, and that upon striding to the door I should see another tragedy. From the doorway I watched an army in retreat. It was the army of Antwerp marching into Dunkirk. I took off my hat and watched with bared head.
They were but broken regiments, marching disorderly for the most part, yet here and there were little bodies of men keeping step, with shouldered rifles, in fine, grim pride. The municipal guards came by, shoulder to shoulder, as on parade, but they were followed by long convoys of mounted men on stumbling horses, who came with heaps of disorderly salvage piled on to dusty wagons. Saddles and bridles and bits, the uniforms of many regiments flung out hurriedly from barrack cupboards; rifles, swords, and boots were heaped on to beds of straw, and upon the top of them lay men exhausted to the point of death, so that their heads flopped and lolled as the carts came jolting through the streets. Armoured cars with mitrailleuses, motor-cars slashed and plugged by German bullets, forage carts and ambulances, struggled by in a tide of traffic between bodies of foot- soldiers slouching along without any pride, but dazed with weariness. Their uniforms were powdered with the dust of the roads, their faces were blanched and haggard for lack of food and sleep. Some of them had a delirious look and they stared about them with rolling eyes in which there was a gleam of madness. Many of these men were wounded, and spattered with their blood. Their bandages were stained with scarlet splotches, and some of them were so weak that they left their ranks and sat in doorways, or on the kerb-stones, with their heads drooping sideways. Many another man, footsore and lame, trudged along on one boot and a bandaged sock, with the other boot slung to his rifle barrel.
Riding alone between two patrols of mounted men was a small boy on a high horse. He was a fair-haired lad of twelve or so, in a Belgian uniform, with a tasselled cap over one ear, and as he passed the Dunquerquoises clapped hands and called out: "Bravo! Bravo!" He took the ovation with a grin and held his head high.