Tournai, which is not at all damaged in the centre of the town, has a number of houses destroyed in its northern part. The wonderful cathedral, a mixture of twenty different styles, but, in spite of this, quite harmonious and beautiful, has received a shell which luckily has not done much damage.
Four large motor-vans passed in front of me on the road to Courtrai, and my horse, which in former years had probably been a good charger, reared and neighed loudly. They were Red Cross vans loaded with wounded. Four or five times a day they go to Tournai carrying wounded, and come back carrying sanitary material to the northern section of the German front.
I crossed the Schelde by a temporary bridge made with curious concrete flat boats. The bridge was guarded by numerous soldiers, and with them was an Austrian officer, the only one I saw during the whole of my journey in Belgium.
I had to get off the saddle and show my papers. While waiting for the officer to look at them, my attention was attracted to an extraordinary-looking boat drawn up near the river side. The boat was just like one of the ordinary flat, large river boats which in Belgium carry stones and coal on canals and rivers, but for an exceptionally clean, smart appearance lent to it by a verandah covered with glass, under which were numerous palm trees. The whole boat was painted white, and on the top of it waved the Red Cross flag. On deck were two white-clad nurses, and one or two wounded with bandaged heads sat smoking and reading in basket-chairs on the verandah.
I was told that the boat is one of the Berlin Red Cross League floating hospitals, and that the nurses are all ladies in society. These hospital boats are specially intended for wounded or sick officers who are likely to recover soon if properly treated.
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Are there any inhabitants left in Courtrai? I did not see any during my visit there. The hotels and the public buildings were taken up by Germans; numerous platforms for guns were being constructed in the western part of the town. A number of temporary fortification works had already been prepared here. The line of the Lys seems to have been carefully fortified down to Courtrai, and one almost gets the impression that the Germans are seriously thinking of the possibility of a retreat on this river, while a second and still better fortified line has been prepared twenty kilometres (about thirteen miles) behind on the Schelde.
At the base of the old fortifications of the town, where the famous Bataille des Eperons d'Or was fought, the invaders have arranged a sort of artillery depôt. The special carriages carry the fire-pieces from Essen to this spot, where they are put together, and then sent to their destination.
There are the enormous siege guns, as massive as elephants, and as complicated as a cathedral organ; the quick-firing guns, light and agile; the short and squat mortars; and on one side a sort of cemetery of old artillery pieces; guns without carriages, smashed wheels, distorted and broken remains of old arms blackened and made unrecognisable by the explosions of hostile projectiles.
The number of soldiers here seemed enormous. Day after day trains loaded with new troops kept coming. These men are only in part sent to the front, the other part leaving for an unknown destination. I had the impression that something was being prepared, probably a desperate attack on the north-west in the direction of Ypres and Dixmude.