Part 4 (2/2)
About half an hour later, when we were sitting in the Queen's, Thompson, pale as a sheet, staggered into the deserted lobby closely followed by Weigel and Hunt and the Dutch Vice-Consul, the latter somewhat out of his head. Just after I left 74 Rue de Peage, a 32 cm.
sh.e.l.l burst on the roof, tearing off the two top floors of the house, throwing Thompson's bed into the street, and setting the place on fire.
At sundown the house was in ashes. Somehow or other the men all got out, rescuing a portion of their paraphernalia.
All Thursday afternoon the German Taubes circled above the city-- mostly along the waterfront. Below them puffed little clouds of smoke where sh.e.l.ls from the Belgian anti-aircraft guns were exploding. I fancy the airmen were locating the pontoon bridge and signaling to the Prussian battery commanders six miles away; but during Wednesday and Thursday, when the crowds of refugees were a.s.sembled on the waterfront, not a single bomb dropped among them. A few sh.e.l.ls, well placed, would have slaughtered them like sheep. Before and during the bombardment I am quite certain that the Germans intended to frighten, rather than injure, non-combatants.
Report to the contrary notwithstanding, it is equally true that, so far as possible, the invaders kept to their promise to spare such buildings as the Cathedral, the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, the Castle Steen, and other historic landmarks.
The bombardment lasted forty hours. That night,--Thursday, October 8th,--the second and last night which the town held out, all of the Americans who were left gathered at the Queen's. The firing by this time was terrific. Except for the lurid glare of the burning buildings which lit up the streets, the city was in total darkness. For weeks martial law had been in effect and there were no lights after sundown.
An unearthly feeling it was, to be locked in the darkness of this strange city, unable to speak a word of the language, not knowing whether the garrison had evacuated the forts or whether the city had been surrendered, believing there would be street righting or an insurrection of franc-tireurs. At times we heard through the darkness the tramp of squads of soldiers. Surely, we thought, there come the Germans. We remembered the atrocities at Louvain.
About an hour after darkness settled on us I climbed to the roof of the Queen's Hotel, from which, for a few minutes, I looked out upon the most horrible and at the same time the most gorgeous panorama that I ever hope to see. The entire southern portion of the city appeared a desolate ruin; whole streets were ablaze, and great sheets of fire rose to the height of thirty or forty feet.
The night, like the preceding, was calm and quiet, without a breath of wind. On all sides rose greedy tongues of flame which seemed to thirst for things beyond their reach. Slowly and majestically the sparks floated skyward; and every now and then, following the explosion of a sh.e.l.l, a new burst of flame lighted up a section hitherto hidden in darkness. The window panes of the houses still untouched flashed the reflection in our eyes.
Even more glorious was the scene to the north. On the opposite side of the Scheldt the oil tanks, the first objects to be set on fire by bombs from the German Taubes, were blazing furiously and vomiting huge volumes of oil-laden smoke. Looking over on this side of the river, too, I could see the crackling wooden houses of the village of St.
Nicolas, lighting with their glow all of northern Antwerp and the water-front. In the swampy meadows on the farther bank we could see the frightened refugees as they hurried along the still protected road to Ghent. They pa.s.sed on our side of the burning village, not five hundred yards away. Every now and then as a fitful flame lighted the meadow I could see the figures silhouetted against the red background.
They appeared to be actually walking through the flames like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It was all a glorious and fascinating nightmare.
There was at this time an ominous lull in the moaning pound of shrapnel.
Out of the darkness in the direction of West Antwerp came a new sound-the low methodical beat of feet. The noise became gradually louder and louder until one could hear the rumble of heavy wheels and distinguish the sound of voices above the crowd. This was the beginning of the British and Belgian retreat, which started at about eight o'clock Thursday night, and, under cover of darkness, continued unbroken for eight hours. Following the line taken by the escaping populace this retreat went past our position on the water-front. Before dawn on Friday morning, when the light became strong enough for the advancing army to make out the enemy's position, practically the entire Belgian army plus ten thousand Royal British Naval Marines had got across the pontoon bridge and were well along the road to Ghent. During all these hours squads of gendarmes with fixed bayonets held back such remaining townsfolk as attempted to get near the bridge. To these wretches it seemed that their last avenue of escape had been cut off. There were now at the Queen's, Arthur Ruhl, Hare, and myself, in addition to an English intelligence officer and the recruits from ”Fort Thompson.” We talked over our plans for the next day. The intelligence officer volunteered to get up with me at sunrise and scour the river for a barge. It was my idea, in case we could make any kind of arrangements for a get-away, to come back and report to the other fellows. I remember that Arthur Ruhl was uncertain as to whether he would come with us or wait for the German entry. He was worried about some friends in the British field hospital, and he decided not to leave without looking them up,--a pretty white thing to do, it seemed to me.
I tried to sleep, but the rumble of artillery wagons and shouts of the marchers prevented. So I spent most of the night of the British and Belgian retreat beneath my window. At daybreak the intelligence officer came to my room and we started out along the water-front, moving in the direction of the Dutch border. With the rising sun on Friday morning the German Taubes again swept over the city. When the Germans saw that the whole British and Belgian army had got away from them they moved up their 42 cm. guns and literally gave us h.e.l.l. This time they had no mercy on the few remaining noncombatants.
The intelligence officer's baggage delayed us a long time. When we got up nearly as far as Fort St. Philippe, we separated. We saw a barge anch.o.r.ed in the river and he had an idea it would leave about seven o'clock, and that we might be able to get on it. I gave him my knapsack containing my gold belt, which, in the confusion, I had not had time to strap on, and started to make a dash back to the Queen's, because I considered that I ought to let the other fellows know what had happened to us.
I had fifteen minutes to cover the distance.
I ran. The sh.e.l.ls, at that time, were falling at a rate, I should judge, of five a minute. Opposite the Castle Steen I had a narrow escape--just concussion, I suppose. Directly above me came a crash of thunder. A few moments later I found myself lying in the street, head pointing north--dazed. A bomb crashed through the eaves and tore a hole as big as a small cellar in the street directly before the old castle, bursting with the concussion of a tornado. For a few moments I sat on the street feeling weak in the legs and unable to move.
Again I started back to the Queen's. Two hundred yards east of the bridge some soldiers held me up.
”Get back!” they shouted, believing that I was making for the pontoon.
They turned me back, and I hesitated a moment. A terrible explosion, louder than anything I had yet heard, rocked the city to its foundations. For a moment the walls of the houses trembled and every window on the waterfront was broken. The retreating Belgian army had blown up that pontoon bridge and with it what then seemed the last hope of escape for the few remaining survivors. For a few moments wreckage writhed in midstream like a great sea creature in agony of death.
Past me rushed groups of Belgian soldiers, the remainder of a few hundred who had been left to cover the British and Belgian retreat, fire the last shots from the forts, and spike the guns as the Germans approached. Pitiable was the terror of these fellows when they saw the bridge gone. Many of them were out of their heads through exposure and exhaustion; not a few of them wept. One sergeant tore off his uniform and fatigue cap and tried to exchange them for my citizen's clothes.
The worst fire of the entire bombardment was concentrated during these moments; the racket was stupendous. Because gunboats, barges, lighters, tenders, rowboats, were commandeered by the military authorities to ferry across soldiers and wounded there was slim chance for noncombatants. Above the noise of bomb and shrapnel Belgian gunboats added to the confusion by cannonading big boats along the quay. This was done in order that the Germans might not make use of them for the pursuit. It speaks volumes for my military knowledge that for a brief moment I imagined the Germans had embarked upstream and were going to make a river battle of it.
By this time the American correspondents had left the Queen's, going in different directions for different purposes. Hunt and Thompson, I later learned, went to the American Consulate, where they stayed during the German entry.
For a moment I see-sawed up and down the river bank, remembering I had left my handbag at the Queen's, but, infinitely more important, that my knapsack with money belt and diary were in the keeping of a peripatetic acquaintance somewhere along the crowded piers downstream. Without that gold, the thousands of miles to New York seemed doubly long. When I at last got back to the barge office a dock-hand pointed to a bench in the corner; there to my intense relief lay the knapsack, where my kind English intelligence officer had left it.
A little later I managed to clamber on a river barge laden nearly to the sinking point with Antwerp's peaceful burghers and their dumb-looking women and children. Slowly--very slowly--we steamed out of the haze of powder and oil-laden smoke, through long lines of gunboats and a flotilla of drifting scows packed to the gunwales like our own, and past Fort St. Philippe, whose garrison were at that moment heaving tons of powder into the river.
A few miles farther downstream they landed us on the northern bank of the Scheldt near the little town of Liefkenshack. Here I began a few miles of walking, occasionally varied by ox-cart locomotion.
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