“The enemy!” he shouted. “The message is in German!”
Yet they still plugged away with their rifles, undaunted at the enemy’s advance. The forts were speaking more frequently now, and continually the very earth trembled beneath the great crashes of modern artillery of the Brailmont system of defence.
Along that dark line of low hills was seen constant flashing in the blackness; storm clouds had arisen to obscure the moon, and rain was now threatening. The whole sky was now a deep, angry red, with patches of crimson heightening and dying down—the reflections of the inferno of war. The noise was deafening, and on every hand the gallant defenders were sustaining heavy losses.
Of a sudden, before indeed they were aware of it, the whole edge of the wood became lit up by an intense white brilliance, so dazzling that one could not discern anything in front. A thousand headlights of motor-cars seemed to be there focussed into one. The Germans had turned one of their great field searchlights upon them, and a second later shells fell and burst in all directions in the vicinity.
Handicapped by want of such modern appliances, the Belgians were unable to retaliate. They could only remain there, in the actual zone of the enemy’s pitiless fire. Dozens of brave men fell shattered or dead amid that awful whirlwind of bullets and fragments of steel, as slowly the long ray of intense light moved along the line, searching for its prey, followed by the enemy’s artillery which never failed to keep up a pitiless, relentless fire, with wonderful accuracy for a night engagement.
From end to end swept that white line of brilliancy; then slowly—very slowly—it came back again, causing the men to lie flat upon their stomachs and wait in breathless anxiety until it had passed. Time after time that long, shallow trench which was, after all, only a ditch, for no opportunity had been afforded for military engineering—was swept by both light and fire from end to end, and each time Edmond’s comrades were being placed hors de combat. That the situation was critical, he knew. Yet not a single man stood dismayed. Their Mausers crackled with just the same regularity, and, thanks to the fine spirit of his men, his pom-pom continued to rain lead upon the trenches of Von Emmich’s walls of men across the river.
At last the “retire” was sounded. The position had by this time become quite untenable. Edmond Valentin bit his nether lip. The same order always. They retired, but never advanced. For them, the Teuton tide seemed utterly overwhelming. Yet their spirit was never broken. The Belgian is ever an optimist.
Surely Belgium would never fall beneath the Kaiser’s rule, to be ground under his iron heel and smashed by that “mailed fist” which had so long been the favourite joke of the great caricaturists of Europe.
Impossible!
With alacrity the Maxim was dismounted, and with calm orderliness the retirement was commenced at a moment when that annoying searchlight had turned its attention to the right flank, and the great white beam lay full upon it.