CHAPTER XXI

HARROWING SCENES ALONG THE BATTLE LINES

DRIVING BACK THE GERMANS UNDER FIRE -- ON THE FIRING LINE -- AMONG MANGLED HORSES AND MEN -- GERMAN LOSSES FRIGHTFUL -- DIXMUDE A PLACE OF DEATH AND HORROR.

Some idea of the ruin wrought day after day as the battle raged in Flanders may be gained from the occasional reports of war correspondents who shared the fortunes of battle.

“The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life,” wrote a correspondent of the London Daily News in October. “Air engines, sea engines, and land engines death-sweep this desolate country, vertically, horizontally, and transversely. Through it the frail little human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled, ordered here and there, sleeping where they can, never washing, and dying unnoticed. A friend may find himself firing on a friendly force, and few are to blame.

“Thursday the Germans were driven back over the Yser; Friday they secured a footing again, and Saturday they were again hurled back. Now a bridge blown up by one side is repaired by the other; it is again blown up by the first, or left as a death trap till the enemy is actually crossing.

“Actions by armored trains, some of them the most reckless adventures, are attempted daily. Each day accumulates an unwritten record of individual daring feats, accepted as part of the daily work. Day by day our men push out on these dangerous explorations, attacked by shell fire, in danger of cross-fire, dynamite, and ambuscades, bringing a priceless support to the threatened lines. As the armored train approaches the river under shell fire the car cracks with the constant thunder of guns aboard. It is amazing to see the angle at which the guns can be swung.

“And overhead the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of exploding shells to get one small fact of information. We used to regard the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece of impudent defiance to our infantry fire. Now we know it means early trouble for the infantry.

“Besides us, as we crawl up snuffing the lines like dogs on a scent, grim train-loads of wounded wait soundlessly in the sidings. Further up the line ambulances are coming slowly back. The bullets of machine guns begin to rattle on our armored coats. Shells we learned to disregard, but the machine gun is the master in this war.

“Now we near the river at a flat country farm. The territory is scarred with trenches, and it is impossible to say at first who is in them, so incidental and separate are the fortunes of this riverside battle. The Germans are on our bank enfilading the lines of the Allies’ trenches. We creep up and the Germans come into sight out of the trenches, rush to the bank, and are scattered and mashed. The Allies follow with a fierce bayonet charge.

“The Germans do not wait. They rush to the bridges and are swept away by the deadliest destroyer of all, the machine gun. The bridge is blown up, but who can say by whom? Quickly the train runs back.

“‘A brisk day,’ remarks the correspondent. ‘Not so bad,’ replies the officer. So the days pass.”

ON THE FIRING LINE

Another correspondent who, accompanied by a son of the Belgian War Minister, M. de Broqueville, made a tour of the battleground in the Dixmude district wrote:

“No pen could do justice to the grandeur and horror of the scene. As far as the eye could reach nothing could be seen but burning villages and bursting shells.

“Arriving at the firing line, a terrible scene presented itself. The shell fire from the German batteries was so terrific that Belgian soldiers and French marines were continually being blown out of their dugouts and sent scattering to cover. Elsewhere, also, little groups of peasants were forced to flee because their cellars began to fall in. These unfortunates had to make their way as best they could on foot to the rear. They were frightened to death by the bursting shells, and the sight of crying children among them was most pathetic.

“Dixmude was the objective of the German attack, and shells were bursting all over it, crashing among the roofs and blowing whole streets to pieces. From a distance of three miles we could hear them crashing down, but the town itself was invisible, except for the flames and the smoke and clouds rising above it. The Belgians had only a few field batteries, so that the enemy’s howitzers simply dominated the field, and the infantry trenches around the town had to rely upon their own unaided efforts.

AMONG MANGLED HORSES AND MEN

“Our progress along the road was suddenly stopped by one of the most horrible sights I have ever seen. A heavy howitzer shell had fallen and burst right in the midst of a Belgian battery which was making its way to the front, causing terrible destruction. The mangled horses and men among the debris presented a shocking spectacle.

“Eventually, we got into Dixmude itself, and every time a shell came crashing among the roofs we thought our end had come. The Hôtel de Ville (town hall) was a sad sight. The roof was completely riddled by shell, while inside was a scene of chaos. It was piled with loaves of bread, bicycles, and dead soldiers.

“The battle redoubled in fury, and by seven o’clock in the evening Dixmude was a furnace, presenting a scene of terrible grandeur. The horizon was red with burning homes.

“Our return journey was a melancholy one, owing to the constant trains of wounded that were passing.”

GERMAN LOSSES FRIGHTFUL

“The German losses are frightful” wrote another correspondent. “Three meadows near Ostend are heaped with dead. The wounded are now installed in private houses in Bruges, where large wooden sheds are being rushed up to receive additional injured. Thirty-seven farm wagons containing wounded, dying, and dead passed in one hour near Middelkerke.”

DIXMUDE A PLACE OF DEATH AND HORROR

From Fumes, Belgium, members of the staff of the English hospital traveled to Dixmude to search for wounded men on the firing line. Philip Gibbs, of the London Daily Chronicle, who traveled with them in reporting his experiences, said:

“I was in one of the ambulances, and Mr. Gleeson sat behind me in the narrow space between the stretchers. Over his shoulder he talked in a quiet voice of the job that lay before us. I was glad of that quiet voice, so placid in its courage. We went forward at what seemed to me a crawl, though I think it was a fair pace, shells bursting around us now on all sides, while shrapnel bullets sprayed the earth about us. It appeared to me an odd thing that we were still alive. Then we came into Dixmude.

“When I saw it for the first and last time it was a place of death and horror. The streets through which we passed were utterly deserted and wrecked from end to end, as though by an earthquake. Incessant explosions of shell fire crashed down upon the walls which still stood. Great gashes opened in the walls, which then toppled and fell. A roof came tumbling down with an appalling clatter. Like a house of cards blown by a puff of wind, a little shop suddenly collapsed into a mass of ruins. Here and there, further into the town, we saw living figures. They ran swiftly for a moment and then disappeared into dark caverns under toppling porticoes. They were Belgian soldiers. . . .

“We stood on some steps, looking down into that cellar. It was a dark hole, illumined dimly by a lantern, I think. I caught sight of a little heap of huddled bodies. Two soldiers, still unwounded, dragged three of them out and handed them up to us. The work of getting those three men into the first ambulance seemed to us interminable; it was really no more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

“I had lost consciousness of myself. Something outside myself, as it seemed, was saying that there was no way of escape; that it was monstrous to suppose that all these bursting shells would not smash the ambulance to bits and finish the agony of the wounded, and that death was very hideous. I remember thinking also how ridiculous it was for men to kill one another like this and to make such hells on earth.”