[A SUPER-BELGIAN.]
A quick command from General Bertrand at Haecht turned a retreat of the Belgian forces into an attack in much the same manner as that in which General Sheridan rallied the Union forces at the battle of Winchester in the Civil War. The story is printed in the Currier des Armes, the official Belgian soldiers' paper.
General Bertrand, who succeeded General Leman in command of the division which withstood the Germans at Liége, suddenly found his troops in retreat.
"Friends," he shouted, "you've mistaken the road! The enemy is in the other direction!"
Electrified by their leader's words, the soldiers wheeled about and charged the German troops with renewed vigor.
On another occasion the general is declared to have stopped an attack of two Belgian companies upon each other by rushing between their lines and singing a popular ditty. Until they heard the general's voice, the soldiers did not realize that they were firing on their own countrymen.
The general is fifty-seven years old. He was a second lieutenant at twenty years, and became a major-general last March.