Fighting in Flanders by E. Alexander Powell
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E. Alexander Powell >> Fighting in Flanders
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Fighting In Flanders
By E. Alexander Powell
Special Correspondent Of The New York World With The Belgian
Forces In The Field
Author of "The Last Frontier" "Gentlemen Ravers," "The End of the
Trail," "The Road to Glory," etc.
With Illustrations From Photographs By Mr. Donald Thompson
To
My Friends
The Belgians
"I have eaten your bread and salt;
I have drunk your water and wine;
The deaths you died I have sat beside
And the lives that you led were mine."
RUDYARD KIPLING.
Contents
Foreword
I. The War Correspondents
II. The City Of Gloom
III. The Death In The Air
IV. Under The German Eagle
V. With The Spiked Helmets
VI. On The Belgian Battle-Line
VII. The Coming Of The British
VIII. The Fall Of Antwerp
Appendix
Foreword
Nothing is more unwise, on general principles, than to attempt to
write about a war before that war is finished and before history has
given it the justice of perspective. The campaign which began with
the flight of the Belgian Government from Brussels and which
culminated in the fall of Antwerp formed, however, a separate and
distinct phase of the Greatest of Wars, and I feel that I should write
of that campaign while its events are still sharp and clear in my
memory and before the impressions it produced have begun to
fade. I hope that those in search of a detailed or technical account
of the campaign in Flanders will not read this book, because they
are certain to be disappointed. It contains nothing about strategy or
tactics and few military lessons can be drawn from it. It is merely the
story, in simple words, of what I, a professional onlooker, who was
accorded rather exceptional facilities for observation, saw in
Belgium during that nation's hour of trial.
An American, I went to Belgium at the beginning of the war with an open
mind. I had few, if any, prejudices. I knew the English, the French,
the Belgians, the Germans equally well. I had friends in all four
countries and many happy recollections of days I had spent in each.
When I left Antwerp after the German occupation I was as pro-Belgian
as though I had been born under the red-black-and-yellow banner. I had
seen a country, one of the loveliest and most peaceable in Europe,
invaded by a ruthless and brutal soldiery; I had seen its towns and
cities blackened by fire and broken by shell; I had seen its churches
and its historic monuments destroyed; I had seen its highways crowded
with hunted, homeless fugitives; I had seen its fertile fields strewn
with the corpses of what had once been the manhood of the nation; I
had seen its women left husbandless and its children left fatherless;
I had seen what was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land of
desolation; and I had seen its people--a people whom I, like the rest
of the world, had always thought of as pleasure-loving, inefficient,
easy-going--I had seen this people, I say, aroused, resourceful,
unafraid, and fighting, fighting, fighting. Do you wonder that they
captured my imagination, that they won my admiration? I am pro-Belgian;
I admit it frankly. I should be ashamed to be anything else.
E. Alexander Powell
London, November 1, 1914.
I. The War Correspondents
War correspondents regard war very much as a doctor regards
sickness. I don't suppose that a doctor is actually glad that people
are sick, but so long as sickness exists in the world he feels that he
might as well get the benefit of it. It is the same with war
correspondents. They do not wish anyone to be killed on their
account, but so long as men are going to be killed anyway, they
want to be on hand to witness the killing and, through the
newspapers, to tell the world about it. The moment that the war
broke out, therefore, a veritable army of British and American
correspondents descended upon the Continent. Some of them were
men of experience and discretion who had seen many wars and
had a right to wear on their jackets more campaign ribbons than
most generals. These men took the war seriously. They were there
to get the news and, at no matter what expenditure of effort and
money, to get that news to the end of a telegraph-wire so that the
people in England and America might read it over their coffee-cups
the next morning. These men had unlimited funds at their disposal;
they had the united influence of thousands of newspapers and of
millions of newspaper-readers solidly behind them; and they carried
in their pockets letters of introduction from editors and ex-presidents
and ambassadors and prime ministers.
Then there was an army corps of special writers, many of them with
well-known names, sent out by various newspapers and magazines
to write "mail stuff," as dispatches which are sent by mail instead of
telegraph are termed, and "human interest" stories. Their
qualifications for reporting the greatest war in history consisted, for
the most part, in having successfully "covered" labour troubles and
murder trials and coronations and presidential conventions, and, in
a few cases, Central American revolutions. Most of the stories which
they sent home were written in comfortable hotel rooms in London
or Paris or Rotterdam or Ostend. One of these correspondents,
however, was not content with a hotel window viewpoint. He wanted
to see some German soldiers--preferably Uhlans. So he obtained a
letter of introduction to some people living in the neighbourhood of
Courtrai, on the Franco-Belgian frontier. He made his way there with
considerable difficulty and received a cordial welcome. The very first
night that he was there a squadron of Uhlans galloped into the town,
there was a slight skirmish, and they galloped out again. The
correspondent, who was a sound sleeper, did not wake up until it
was all over. Then he learned that the Uhlans had ridden under his
very window.
Crossing on the same steamer with me from New York was a well-known
novelist who in his spare time edits a Chicago newspaper. He was
provided with a sheaf of introductions from exalted personages
and a bag containing a thousand pounds in gold coin. It was so
heavy that he had brought a man along to help him carry it, and
at night they took turns in sitting up and guarding it. He confided
to me that he had spent most of his life in trying to see wars, but
though on four occasions he had travelled many thousands of miles
to countries where wars were in progress, each time he had arrived
just after the last shot was fired. He assured me very earnestly that
he would go back to Michigan Boulevard quite contentedly if he
could see just one battle. I am glad to say that his perseverance
was finally rewarded and that he saw his battle. He never told me
just how much of the thousand pounds he took back to Chicago
with him, but from some remarks he let drop I gathered that he had
found battle-hunting an expensive pastime.
One of the great London dailies was represented in Belgium by a
young and slender and very beautiful English girl whose name, as a
novelist and playwright, is known on both sides of the Atlantic. I
met her in the American Consulate at Ghent, where she was pleading
with Vice-Consul Van Hee to assist her in getting through the
German lines to Brussels. She had heard a rumour that Brussels
was shortly going to be burned or sacked or something of the sort,
and she wanted to be on hand for the burning and sacking. She had
arrived in Belgium wearing a London tailor's idea of what constituted
a suitable costume for a war correspondent--perhaps I should say
war correspondentess. Her luggage was a model of compactness: it
consisted of a sleeping-bag, a notebook, half a dozen pencils--and
a powder-puff. She explained that she brought the sleeping-bag
because she understood that war correspondents always slept in
the field. As most of the fields in that part of Flanders were just
then under several inches of water as a result of the autumn rains,
a folding canoe would have been more useful. She was as insistent
on being taken to see a battle as a child is on being taken to the
pantomime. Eventually her pleadings got the better of my judgment
and I took her out in the car towards Alost to see, from a safe
distance, what promised to be a small cavalry engagement. But the
Belgian cavalry unexpectedly ran into a heavy force of Germans,
and before we realized what was happening we were in a very warm
corner indeed. Bullets were kicking up little spurts of dust about us;
bullets were tang-tanging through the trees and clipping off twigs,
which fell down upon our heads; the rat-tat-tat of the German
musketry was answered by the angry snarl of the Belgian machine-guns;
in a field near by the bodies of two recently killed cuirassiers
lay sprawled grotesquely. The Belgian troopers were stretched flat
upon the ground, a veteran English correspondent was giving a
remarkable imitation of the bark on a tree, and my driver, my
photographer and I were peering cautiously from behind the corner
of a brick farmhouse. I supposed that Miss War Correspondent was
there too, but when I turned to speak to her she was gone. She was
standing beside the car, which we had left in the middle of the road
because the bullets were flying too thickly to turn it around, dabbing
at her nose with a powder-puff which she had left in the tonneau
and then critically examining the effect in a pocket-mirror.
"For the love of God!" said I, running out and dragging her back to
shelter, "don't you know that you'll be killed if you stay out here?"
"Will I?" said she, sweetly. "Well, you surely don't expect me to be
killed with my nose unpowdered, do you?"
That evening I asked her for her impressions of her first battle.
"Well," she answered, after a meditative pause, "it certainly was
very chic."
The third and largest division of this journalistic army consisted of
free lances who went to the Continent at their own expense on the
chance of "stumbling into something." About the only thing that any
of them stumbled into was trouble. Some of them bore the most
extraordinary credentials ever carried by a correspondent; some of
them had no credentials at all. One gentleman, who was halted
while endeavouring to reach the firing line in a decrepit cab,
informed the officer before whom he was taken that he represented
the Ladies' Home Journal of Philadelphia. Another displayed a letter
from the editor of a well-known magazine saying that he "would be
pleased to consider any articles which you care to submit." A third,
upon being questioned, said naively that he represented his literary
agent. Then--I almost forgot him--there was a Methodist clergyman
from Boston who explained to the Provost-Marshal that he was
gathering material for a series of sermons on the horrors of war.
Add to this army of writers another army of photographers and
war-artists and cinematograph-operators and you will have some idea of
the problem with which the military authorities of the warring nations
were confronted. It finally got down to the question of which should
be permitted to remain in the field--the war correspondents or the
soldiers. There wasn't room for them both. It was decided to retain
the soldiers.
The general staffs of the various armies handled the war
correspondent problem in different ways. The British War Office
at first announced that under no considerations would any
correspondents be permitted in the areas where British troops were
operating, but such a howl went up from Press and public alike that
this order was modified and it was announced that a limited number
of correspondents, representing the great newspaper syndicates
and press associations, would, after fulfilling certain rigorous
requirements, be permitted to accompany his Majesty's forces in the
field. These fortunate few having been chosen after much heart-burning,
they proceeded to provide themselves with the prescribed uniforms
and field-kits, and some of them even purchased horses. After the
war had been in progress for three months they were still in
London. The French General Staff likewise announced that no
correspondents would be permitted with the armies, and when any
were caught they were unceremoniously shipped to the nearest port
between two unsympathetic gendarmes with a warning that they
would be shot if they were caught again.
The Belgian General Staff made no announcement at all. The police
merely told those correspondents who succeeded in getting into the
fortified position of Antwerp that their room was preferable to their
company and informed them at what hour the next train for the
Dutch frontier was leaving. Now the correspondents knew perfectly
well that neither the British nor the French nor the Belgians would
actually shoot them, if for no other reason than the unfavourable
impression which would be produced by such a proceeding; but
they did know that if they tried the patience of the military authorities
too far they would spend the rest of the war in a military prison. So,
as an imprisoned correspondent is as valueless to the newspaper
which employs him as a prisoner of war is to the nation whose
uniform he wears, they compromised by picking up such information
as they could along the edge of things. Which accounts for most of
the dispatches being dated from Ostend or Ghent or Dunkirk or
Boulogne or from "the back of the front," as one correspondent
ingeniously put it.
As for the Germans, they said bluntly that any correspondents found
within their lines would be treated as spies--which meant being
blindfolded and placed between a stone wall and a firing party. And
every correspondent knew that they would do exactly what they
said. They have no proper respect for the Press, these Germans.
That I was officially recognized by the Belgian Government and
given a laisser-passer by the military Governor of Antwerp
permitting me to pass at will through both the outer and inner lines
of fortifications, that a motor-car and a military driver were placed at
my disposal, and that throughout the campaign in Flanders I was
permitted to accompany the Belgian forces, was not due to any
peculiar merits or qualifications of my own, or even to the influence
exerted by the powerful paper which I represented, but to a series of
unusual and fortunate circumstances which there is no need to
detail here. There were many correspondents who merited from
sheer hard work what I received as a result of extraordinary good
fortune.
The civilians who were wandering, foot-loose and free, about
the theatre of operations were by no means confined to the
representatives of the Press; there was an amazing number of
young Englishmen and Americans who described themselves as
"attaches" and "consular couriers" and "diplomatic messengers,"
and who intimated that they were engaged in all sorts of dangerous
and important missions. Many of these were adventurous young
men of means who had "come over to see the fun" and who had
induced the American diplomatic representatives in London and
The Hague to give them dispatches of more or less importance--
usually less than more--to carry through to Antwerp and Brussels. In
at least one instance the official envelopes with the big red seals
which they so ostentatiously displayed contained nothing but sheets
of blank paper. Their sole motive was in nearly all cases curiosity.
They had no more business wandering about the war-zone than
they would have had wandering about a hospital where men were
dying. Belgium was being slowly strangled; her villages had been
burned, her fields laid waste, her capital was in the hands of the
enemy, her people were battling for their national existence; yet
these young men came in and demanded first-row seats, precisely
as though the war was a spectacle which was being staged for their
special benefit.
One youth, who in his busy moments practised law in Boston,
though quite frankly admitting that he was only actuated by curiosity,
was exceedingly angry with me because I declined to take him to
the firing-line. He seemed to regard the desperate battle which was
then in progress for the possession of Antwerp very much as
though it was a football game in the Harvard stadium; he seemed
to think that he had a right to see it. He said that he had come all the
way from Boston to see a battle, and when I remained firm in my
refusal to take him to the front he intimated quite plainly that I was
no gentleman and that nothing would give him greater pleasure than
to have a shell explode in my immediate vicinity.
For all its grimness, the war was productive of more than one
amusing episode. I remember a mysterious stranger who called one
morning on the American Consul at Ostend to ask for assistance in
getting through to Brussels. When the Consul asked him to be
seated he bowed stiffly and declined, and when a seat was again
urged upon him he explained, in a hoarse whisper, that sewn in his
trousers were two thousand pounds in bank-notes which he was
taking through to Brussels for the relief of stranded English and
Americans--hence he couldn't very well sit down.
Of all the horde of adventurous characters who were drawn to the
Continent on the outbreak of war as iron-filings are attracted by a
magnet, I doubt if there was a more picturesque figure than a little
photographer from Kansas named Donald Thompson. I met him
first while paying a flying visit to Ostend. He blew into the Consulate
there wearing an American army shirt, a pair of British officer's
riding-breeches, French puttees and a Highlander's forage-cap, and
carrying a camera the size of a parlour-phonograph. No one but an
American could have accomplished what he had, and no American
but one from Kansas. He had not only seen war, all military
prohibitions to the contrary, but he had actually photographed it.
Thompson is a little man, built like Harry Lauder; hard as nails,
tough as raw hide, his skin tanned to the colour of a well-smoked
meerschaum, and his face perpetually wreathed in what he called
his "sunflower smile." He affects riding-breeches and leather
leggings and looks, physically as well as sartorially, as though he
had been born on horseback. He has more chilled steel nerve than
any man I know, and before he had been in Belgium a month his
name became a synonym throughout the army for coolness and
daring. He reached Europe on a tramp-steamer with an overcoat, a
toothbrush, two clean handkerchiefs, and three large cameras. He
expected to have some of them confiscated or broken, he
explained, so he brought along three as a measure of precaution.
His cameras were the largest size made. "By using a big camera no
one can possibly accuse me of being a spy," he explained
ingenuously. His papers consisted of an American passport, a
certificate of membership in the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, and a letter from Colonel Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of
Militia, authorizing him to take pictures of Canadian troops wherever
found.
Thompson made nine attempts to get from Paris to the front. He
was arrested eight times and spent eight nights in guard-houses.
Each time he was taken before a military tribunal. Utterly ignoring
the subordinates, he would insist on seeing the officer in command.
He would grasp the astonished Frenchman by the hand and inquire
solicitously after his health and that of his family.
"How many languages do you speak?" I asked him.
"Three," said he. "English, American, and Yankee."
On one occasion he commandeered a motorcycle standing outside
a cafe and rode it until the petrol ran out, whereupon he abandoned
it by the roadside and pushed on afoot. On another occasion he
explained to the French officer who arrested him that he was
endeavouring to rescue his wife and children, who were in the
hands of the Germans somewhere on the Belgian frontier. The
officer was so affected by the pathos of the story that he gave
Thompson a lift in his car. As a matter of fact, Thompson's wife and
family were quite safe in Topeka, Kansas. Whenever he was
stopped by patrols he would display his letter from the Minister of
Militia and explain that he was trying to overtake the Canadian
troops. "Vive le Canada!" the French would shout enthusiastically.
"Hurrah for our brave allies, les Canadiens! They are doubtless with
the British at the front"--and permit him to proceed. Thompson did
not think it necessary to inform them that the nearest Canadian
troops were still at Quebec.
When within sound of the German guns he was arrested for the
eighth time and sent to Amiens escorted by two gendarmes, who
were ordered to see him aboard the first train for Boulogne. They
evidently considered that they had followed instructions when they
saw him buy a through ticket for London. Shortly after midnight a
train loaded with wounded pulled into the station. Assisted by some
British soldiers, Thompson scrambled to the top of a train standing
at the next platform and made a flashlight picture. A wild panic
ensued in the crowded station. It was thought that a German bomb
had exploded. Thompson was pulled down by the police and would
have been roughly handled had it not been for the interference of
his British friends, who said that he belonged to their regiment.
Shortly afterwards a train loaded with artillery which was being
rushed to the front came in. Thompson, once more aided and
abetted by the British Tommies, slipped under the tarpaulin covering
a field-gun and promptly fell asleep. When he awoke the next
morning he was at Mons. A regiment of Highlanders was passing.
He exchanged a cake of chocolate for a fatigue-cap and fell in with
them. After marching for two hours the regiment was ordered into
the trenches. Thompson went into the trenches too. All through that
terrible day Thompson plied his trade as the soldiers plied theirs.
They used their rifles and he used his camera. Men were shot dead
on either side of him. A storm of shrapnel shrieked and howled
overhead. He said that the fire of the German artillery was
amazingly accurate and rapid. They would concentrate their entire
fire on a single regiment or battery and when that regiment or
battery was out of action they would turn to another and do the
same thing over again. When the British fell back before the
German onset Thompson remained in the trenches long enough to
get pictures of the charging Germans. Then he ran for his life.
That night he bivouacked with a French line regiment, the men
giving him food and a blanket. The next morning he set out for
Amiens en route for England. As the train for Boulogne, packed to
the doors with refugees, was pulling out of the Amiens station, he
noticed a first-class compartment marked "Reserved," the only
occupant being a smartly gowned young woman. Thompson said
that she was very good-looking. The train was moving, but
Thompson took a running jump and dived head-foremost through
the window, landing in the lady's lap. She was considerably startled
until he said that he was an American. That seemed to explain
everything. The young woman proved to be a Russian countesss
who had been living in Paris and who was returning, via England, to
Petrograd. The French Government had placed a compartment at
her disposal, but in the jam at the Paris station she had become
separated from her maid, who had the bag containing her money.
Thompson recounted his adventures at Mons and asked her if she
would smuggle his films into England concealed on her person, as
he knew from previous experience that he would be stopped and
searched by Scotland Yard detectives when the train reached
Boulogne and that, in all probability, the films would be confiscated
or else held up so long that they would be valueless. The countess
finally consented, but suggested, in return for the danger she was
incurring, that Thompson lend her a thousand francs, which she
would return as soon as she reached London. As he had with him
only two hundred and fifty francs, he paid her the balance in United
Cigar Stores coupons, some of which he chanced to have in his
pocket-book, and which, he explained, was American war currency.
He told me that he gave her almost enough to get a briar-pipe. At
Boulogne he was arrested, as he had foreseen, was stripped,
searched and his camera opened, but as nothing was found he was
permitted to continue to London, where he went to the countess's
hotel and received his films--and, I might add, his money and cigar
coupons. Two hours later, having posted his films to America, he
was on his way to Belgium.
Landing at Ostend, he managed to get by train as far as Malines.
He then started to walk the twenty-odd miles into Brussels, carrying
his huge camera, his overcoat, field-glasses, and three hundred
films. When ten miles down the highway a patrol of Uhlans suddenly
spurred out from behind a hedge and covered him with their pistols.
Thompson promptly pulled a little silk American flag out of his
pocket and shouted "Hoch der Kaiser!" and "Auf wiedersehn" which
constituted his entire stock of German. Upon being examined by the
officer in command of the German outpost, he explained that his
Canadian credentials were merely a blind to get through the lines of
the Allies and that he really represented a syndicate of German
newspapers in America, whereupon he was released with apologies
and given a seat in an ambulance which was going into Brussels.
As his funds were by this time running low, he started out to look for
inexpensive lodgings. As he remarked to me, "I thought we had
some pretty big house-agents out in Kansas, but this Mr. 'A. Louer'
has them beaten a mile. Why, that fellow has his card on every
house that's for rent in Brussels!"
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