My first hint that these men had been through any trying experience was the apology offered by a new-comer for being late. He entered rather gravely and said something about having to take the word to his sister of his brother-in-law's death. The whole company turned grave then and conversation from being general was carried on for a few minutes between those near together. I asked the typewriter agent, to fill an awkward pause, whether they had seen much action, and he told me their story.
The fight on the road to Nieuport.
This was a crack mitrailleuse company of Brussels. It had been in the fight from Liège back to Malines and from Antwerp back to Dixmude and Nieuport. Three days before it was told to hold a road into Nieuport. It was a road the Germans must take, if they were to advance, but the Belgians would not give way. They were too clever with their rapid-fire guns to be rushed, and the German bayonet charges only blocked the road with their dead. Again and again the gray line came on, but each time it crumpled before their fire. They were attacked every hour of the day or night, but they were always ready. Finally the Germans got their range and dropped shell after shell right among them.
"They blew us all to pieces," the story went on in a low tone at my elbow. "Those shells don't leave many wounded, but they littered the place with arms and legs. They got a good many of us, but they did not seem to be able to get our guns."
I asked what their loss had been, and he looked around the table, counting, before he answered.
"Let's see, now," he said. "We lost some at Dixmude first. I think there were just seventy last Monday." This was Thursday. "We had a pretty bad time," he ended; looking down.
"How many are there now?" I asked, and he answered with a sweep of his hand around the table. "Five or six more," he said. There were eighteen of them at table now. That meant twenty-three or twenty-four—out of seventy.
"The dogs suffered, too," he added. "We've only got eight out of twenty, and I just heard the dogs around here have already been pressed into service."
Courtesy of the machine gunners.
When I went to bed four of the members of that shattered mitrailleuse company climbed three flights of stairs to see that I had a comfortable room. And these men had just come out of a trench where they had lost more than two thirds their number in three days stopping one of the main lines of the German advance.