‘(2.) That the rest of the Belgian Field Army shall be immediately withdrawn across the Scheldt to what they call the entrenched camp of the left bank. This area is protected by the Scheldt, various forts and entrenchments, and large inundations, and here they hope to find time to recover and reform. From this position they will aid to the best of their ability any relieving movement which may be possible from the west.
‘(3.) Rawlinson will organise relieving force at Ghent and Bruges and prepare to move forward as soon as possible.
‘But I shall hope to-morrow to convince you that it should be strengthened for the operation.
‘We are all agreed that in the circumstances there is no other course open.
‘I return with Rawlinson to-night to Bruges, and early to-morrow morning shall be in London.
‘Aviation park and heavy guns will be moved from Antwerp.’
General Rawlinson and I left the city together that night, and after an anxious drive over roads luckily infested by nothing worse than rumour, I boarded the Attentive at Ostend and returned to England.
So far as the personal aspect of this story is concerned, I cannot feel that I deserve the reproaches and foolish fictions which have been so long freely and ignorantly heaped upon me. I could not foresee that the mission I undertook would keep me away from the Admiralty for more than forty-eight hours, or that I should find myself involved in another set of special responsibilities outside the duties of the office which I held. No doubt had I been ten years older, I should have hesitated long before accepting so unpromising a task. But the events occurred in the order I have described; and at each stage the action which I took seemed right, natural and even inevitable. Throughout I was held in the grip of emergencies and of realities which transcended considerations of praise or blame.[[67]]
But, after all, it is by the results and as a whole that the episode will be judged; and these as will be shown were certainly advantageous to the Allied cause.
After the departure of the Belgian Field Army the further defence of the remaining lines of Antwerp was left to the fortress troops, the 2nd Belgian Division, and the three British Naval Brigades, who held on their front the equivalent of more than five complete German divisions, to wit: the 5th Reserve, 6th Reserve, 4th Ersatz and Marine Division, and the 26th, 37th, and 1st Bavarian Landwehr Brigades.