Part 4 (1/2)

Chapter VI

The Surrender Of Antwerp

As we left the British field hospital, on the Rue de Leopold, a shrieking skyrocket whizzed by above us and buried its hissing head in the river to the north. One or two more fell at a distance of several hundred yards, and in the southern part of the city flames from several houses shot up into the quiet, windless night.

The bombardment was on--the time was 12.07 Wednesday midnight.

For a moment I did not realize that this was the beginning of the end of Antwerp. I had heard so much gun-fire and seen so many bombs dropping from aeroplanes that I did not fully appreciate the significance of these sh.e.l.ls. I scribbled a few notes in my diary, unstrapped my money belt, and then picked out an empty bed at the Queen's Hotel and tumbled in. I must have slept for six or seven hours.

When I arose everything was quiet. The hotel was apparently deserted. I remember being particularly irritated because there was no one in the kitchen who would give me breakfast, so I made myself some tea and then strolled into the street. It so happened that the Germans had been pumping lead steadily into the city for six hours and that this was the morning lull. The Germans are methodical in everything. When they bombard a city they stop for breakfast.

As I walked down the Avenue de Keyser I thought at first it was Sunday--or rather a year of Sundays all rolled into one. Overnight the city had been transformed into a tomb. Shops were closed; iron shutters were pulled down everywhere; trolley cars stood in the street as they had been left. My own footsteps resounded fearfully on the pavement, and I walked five blocks before I saw a human being.

I stopped at the American Consul's office on the Place de Meir, only to find the place was locked. A frightened face behind the grating told me that the consul had taken his wife to the country--good place to be in, I thought.

Things began to seem lonely. I heard sh.e.l.ls falling and saw flames in the southern quarter of the city, and decided to go in that direction to look up an American correspondent and two photographers who had asked me to bunk with them in the cellar of a little abandoned house at 74 Rue de Peage.

Turning down a little side street leading toward the Boulevard de Leopold, I was greeted by a clap of thunder overhead. A sh.e.l.l demolished a house across the street and about thirty yards down.

The concussion knocked over a couple of babies. I picked them up, put them back in the doorway of the house where they seemed to belong, saying over and over again mechanically, ”There, there, don't cry.

There is nothing to be frightened about”; and then, just to show how little I myself was frightened I began to run. I ran for all I was worth. I ran right into the fire. The sh.e.l.ls were falling fairly thick on the Boulevard de Leopold; every two or three hundred yards a house was partially destroyed; bricks and gla.s.s littered the pavement, and occasionally, every quarter of a mile or so, I saw a figure skulking along under the eaves of a building, crouching and ducking in time to the nasty music of the sh.e.l.ls. But I decided that the middle of the street was the safest part.

When I had gone about a quarter of a mile I got my nerve again. I put my hands in my pockets, lighted a cigarette, and was just saying to myself, ”This is pretty good fun, after all,” when CRAs.h.!.+ CRAs.h.!.+ two, or possibly three, sh.e.l.ls, bursting in rapid succession, tore down houses a hundred yards ahead of me. Then one struck in the street, and jagged fragments of angry shrapnel skidded along the pavement like a thrown stone skipping along the surface of the water. I was again trembling all over.

Was the game worth the candle, I asked myself. ”I've come three thousand miles and overcome every obstacle just to get into this horrible mess. If I get disfigured--no, I'd much rather be killed--will it--”

”Cras.h.!.+ Bang!!” went a monster sh.e.l.l as I turned the corner.

Two doors from the corner of a narrow street covered with bricks and mortar fluttered a United States flag, and beneath it the door of 74 Rue de Peage. This place was later spoken of as ”Thompson's fort,”

because Donald C. Thompson, a Kansas photographer, took possession of it after the Belgian family fled, and plundered the neighborhood for coffee, rolls, and meat, with which he stocked his little cellar. The house next door had already been struck, and shattered gla.s.s littered the pavement. The doorstep of 74 was covered by a couple of mattresses and sand-bags. Beneath this, in a dingy sort of coal-bin, heaped with straw, I found crouching the tenants of ”Thompson's fort.”

Next to Berchem, the southern quarter of the city, where the Germans were approaching, the Rue de Peage was the worst spot in Antwerp. We sat for a time listening to the sh.e.l.ls. There were here, in addition to Thompson, Edwin Weigel, a Chicago photographer; Edward Eyre Hunt, of ”Collier's Weekly”; and the Dutch Vice-Consul.

We heard the distant resounding Boom ... Boom ... Boom ... ed ...

Boom ... Boom ... Boom.

An interval of perhaps a second's silence, then a faint moaning, a crescendo wail, the whirr and rush of a snarling, shrieking skyrocket overhead, and a crash, like all the thunders of the universe rolled into one, when the sh.e.l.l struck, followed by the roar of falling brick as a neighboring house came pouring into the street.

”Whee.....wheee.....Hi.....HIOU UIOUW,” we heard. ”Whee ...

whEEE ... whEEE ... UIOUW ... OUWW ... SSH ... SSHSHHH ...

BANG ... BANG!!!!!!”

”Whee.....wheee.....Hi.....HIOUUIOUW,” we heard. ”Whee ...

whEEE ... whEEE ... UIOUW... OUWW... SSH ... SSHSHHH... BANG...

BANG!!!!!!”

I tried to persuade the other fellows to come up to the Queen's Hotel along the Scheldt waterfront on the northern side of the city, where I was then encamped. It was a safer locality because the Germans had not yet got the range of the northern end of the city. Weigel and Thompson, having to look out for their kodaks and moving-picture paraphernalia, decided to wait a while, as did Hunt. Hare, who came in later, had two big kodaks which he wanted to get back to his room in the Queen's. I offered to carry one of them for him.

We shook hands all around and one or two of us exchanged messages to be taken back in case there was any trouble--that is to say, in case, as seemed likely at the time, some of us should get out alive and some should not. Hunt gave me a letter to his family, and later, with watch in hand, started to walk around the burning city to calculate the number of falling sh.e.l.ls per minute! I slung Hare's kodak over my shoulder and we started back, taking separate streets. It was a dash of three quarters of a mile and nothing fell particularly close to us, although the buildings on all sides were in flames. Near a pile of discarded uniforms of the garde civique, I saw what was left of the figure of a man with his insides oozing out, his eyes still open, staring vacantly upwards, and all around him the horrible odor of decaying horses. By this time I was calm and was getting quite accustomed to the bursting of sh.e.l.ls. I suppose I had been through my ”baptism of fire.”