In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

That was sad, to miss him so; but another spy I got at Namur. I saw a man standing amongst the trees, dressed in civilian clothes. He was about fifty-nine years old and had long whiskers, such as you see on many tourists.

I went up to him as he was standing by a tree. I was alert, for I was reconnoitring and expected things to take place.

Before he could understand me and be ready to explain, I rushed at him and had him by the arms and held them to his back. My comrades came up and sent him with his long whiskers to the regiment. I do not know what happened to him. I hope they shot him.

I have here in my pocket an electric lamp with a bull’s eye. It gives a fine strong light. No, this is not what I carried in Belgium, because I exchanged mine with an Englishman for his; but it is just the same. And with these pocket electric lamps we used to search the houses for Germans that were hiding from us. We would find them in dark corners and cellars, and when the light was snapped on them they would throw up their hands and cry, “Oh, my Belgian brothers!”

Then we would say, “Come out of it, and we will give you Belgian brothers!” But we always made them prisoners, and did not kill them. It was “Belgian brothers!” when death was on them, but in the trenches they called us “Belgian swine” and “little devils.” We gave them “swine” presently.

We had been fighting much and had been in the trenches many days, so that we were very tired, and thankful to get three or four days’ rest in Namur. Then, after that blessed change, we went into the firing again, which was shrapnel, and terrible.

Namur was a very strong place and was not expected to fall; but the Germans had made long preparations for the war, and were bombarding with enormous guns—I saw German guns that took twenty-two horses to draw them.

At Namur we lost a lot of men, because of the heavy gun-fire. All the wounded soldiers and prisoners of war were there; but the Germans did not care about that—they fired on the hospital and smashed it up. When we lost Antwerp the prisoners of war were taken away; but when we lost Belgium we could not keep the prisoners, and the Germans got them back again.

After the battle of Namur the regiment was smashed up, like many others. Every man was looking after himself and trying to find his own regiment, which was not easy.

Here is a photograph of Namur, showing the bridge which crosses the river. I was the last man to cross the bridge when we were forced to leave Namur; and for two nights I was in one of these old houses which you can see here in the picture. When I was over the bridge I met a couple of men of my company, and we watched some firing in the distance and felt happy, because we knew that it was the firing of French soldiers, who were just outside Namur.