CHAPTER XI.
The Flight of the Refugees.
While the aforesaid events were taking place, sorrowful scenes were witnessed along the streets. Our attention and sympathies were particularly attracted to the flight of the refugees. In this case we could give no material assistance, as we were able to do in other cases.
For hours and days and weeks the doleful procession passed along the streets; a living stream made up of all ranks and classes of society. Here were seen the poor old farmer’s household, whose sons had gone to the front; and young married women, with small children in their arms or by their sides, whose husbands had to don the soldier’s uniform and go to the war. The sick, the old and the feeble were taken from their beds of suffering and, with shawls or blankets thrown over their shoulders, placed in carts or wagons and carried away, perhaps, to perish by the roadside. We have seen cripples and small children hurriedly driven along the street in wheelbarrows.
Packages carried on their arms, on their backs, or in little carts were about all that the poor people could take, and all that they desired, so confident were they of a speedy return to their homes.
On another day about the end of August, the unbroken line which filed through the street at noon was, without any interruption, passing through at twelve o’clock that night. As the cities, towns and villages were, for the most part, taken by surprise, or bombarded without having received any notice, the civilians had no alternative but to collect a few necessary articles of clothing, and in some cases a loaf of bread, and flee in haste from their homes, leaving crops, cattle, furniture and all their possessions to the fury of the flames and the tide of destruction, so rapidly sweeping down upon them.
Many people of the wealthier class, anticipating what was to come, had packed trunks and boxes with clothing and other personal property and sent them away to what was considered safe quarters. Then they moved away within the fortifications of Antwerp, where it was thought the enemy could not enter. Others, in the firm hope that the war would soon be over and that they would be able to return to their homesteads in a few days, left everything untouched and fled from city to village and from town to town. We met parties of acquaintances in Antwerp who had changed their places of residence nine times within one month, and then were obliged to leave Antwerp in a day or two.
Some let their cattle run loose in the meadows. These were shot down or taken by the soldiers, or appropriated by any one who desired.
It was most pitiful to see these poor people, whose only object was to get away as far as possible from the scenes of conflict. Some carried small loaves of bread; others had a little hay or straw in their wagons; some led a cow or two; others two or three pigs. In some of the carts we recognized faces of our former pupils, who only one short month before were longing for the pleasant vacation days. Their fathers or brothers were in the army, and their homes forsaken. Some children had lost their parents and were crying piteously. When the Sisters left the parish church, where they daily took part in the public devotions for peace, they were besieged by hundreds of these poor, half-frantic refugees, beseeching shelter over night in the church or schools, which were already full to overflowing. The days were warm and pleasant, but the nights were very chilly and sometimes rainy. Where would those poor people go and what could they do without food or shelter for all those little children? The friendly stars looked down from the realms above upon thousands who lay along the roadside, while others crowded the barns and country schools, or made rude tent-like shelters in the bed of the new canal.
This canal would have been opened in September with great festivities, over which King Albert was expected to preside.