At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium

Chapter Six.
In the Trenches before Liège

At that same moment when Aimée had listened to the dread news over the telephone, Edmond Valentin, in the uniform of a sous-officier of Chasseurs-à-pied, in his heavy dark-green overcoat and peaked shako, with his bulging haversack upon his back, was kneeling in a hastily dug trench firing steadily across the broad sunlit river, which lay deep in its valley.

On the opposite bank ran the railway from Liège, across the Dutch frontier to Maastricht, and from beyond the line there appeared all along, for miles, light puffs of smoke which betrayed the position of the enemy, who had crossed those picturesque green hills of the frontier, and who were endeavouring to force a passage across the Meuse.

On the right, over the hills where the river wound, could be heard the loud roar of the German guns which had been brought up against Liège, while from the left came the eternal rattle of the machine-guns. In that trench, before which the river and the canal ran parallel, the men on either ride of Edmond uttered no word. They were silent, firing with regularity, fascinated by the novel scene. Most of them had played the war-game at the annual manoeuvres, when one stood up in trenches and laughed in the face of blank cartridge. Yet here was real war. Already more than one of their comrades had fallen on their faces struck by German bullets, and not far away a shell had just burst behind one of their machine-guns.

The din and rattle of it all struck a strange, uncanny note upon that quiet countryside.

For nearly half an hour Edmond had been plugging away with his men, when of a sudden a machine-gun section ran up close to them. Room was made in the trench, and the gun, carried in parts by half a dozen sturdy soldiers, was quickly assembled.

Then, the belt of cartridges having been adjusted, at the word of command the terrible engine of destruction suddenly spat its hail of death across the river.

The onder-officier with the gun laughed gaily to Edmond, saying in Flemish:

“Our friends yonder will not like this – eh?”

“Oy hebt gelyk,” (you are right), laughed Edmond. “But see over there! What is that smoke; there – away to the left?”

“That is Visé,” was the reply, shouted above the rattle of the machine-gun. “The enemy must have set the place on fire – the brutes! Look?”

And as both watched they saw a great column of black smoke rising slowly into the clear, cloudless sky.

“If they cross at the bridge there they will have the road open to them to Tongres and St. Trond – the main road to Brussels. I suppose we are defending it,” said the onder-officier, a man with a red moustache.

“Ja! Let’s hope so,” said Edmond, raising his Mauser rifle mechanically again, and discharging the five cartridges from its magazine.

At that instant the trench was suddenly swept by a perfect hail of lead from across the river, while from over the heights beyond came a Taube aeroplane, which noisily buzzed as it rose higher and higher, and then, out of range, made a complete circle, in order to reconnoitre the defenders’ position. Dozens of men in the trenches raised their rifles and fired at it. But it had already risen high out of harm’s way, and gaily it circled round and round over the line of the Meuse, noting all the Belgian positions on the north bank of the river, and signalling to the enemy from time to time.

The spot where Edmond was stationed with his regiment was situated about eight miles from Liège, and one from Visé. Just to his right was a bridge, which the Belgians had not destroyed, and which the enemy were now protecting from destruction by means peculiar to the “blonde beasts” of the Kaiser.

Placed upon it were two big furniture-vans, which had been hastily daubed in the Belgian colours – red, black, and yellow. And these were filled with Belgian soldiers, prisoners in German hands. By adopting these dastardly methods, they knew that the defenders would not shell the bridge and destroy it.

Edmond’s regiment did not present any picture of uniformity. Some men about him were dressed in the military fashion of thirty years ago – caps with enormous peaks, and wide-flowing capes covering green and yellow uniforms – while others, including himself, were in the dark-green modern uniform which has lately been adopted, and had been served out to those who had hurriedly rejoined the colours. While the enemy were all in the new service kit of greenish-grey cloth, which at a distance was exceedingly difficult to distinguish – with heavy leather boots reaching half-way up their calves – the Belgians marched in garments of all colours, from the sombre black of the carabineers to the bright amaranthe and green of the Guides.

In war some curious sights are seen in the trenches. Close to where Valentin was crouching there knelt a smart lancer, with a basket containing carrier-pigeons strapped to his back like a knapsack. Amid the roar and din the poor birds fluttered about restlessly inside their cage, eager to escape to their homes. But if the brave little Belgian nation lacked uniforms and accoutrements, it never lacked courage. All was a hubbub of hope, and a talk of victory.

“À bas les Alboches!”

“Vive la guerre!” had been shouted from Ostend to Givet, and the spirits of the nation – soldiers and civilians alike – were of the highest, for now that England had declared war, Belgium was fighting the battles of two great nations, France and Britain.

Both French and British soldiers would soon come to their aid, if they could only hold out.

“They will never silence our forts at Liège,” declared the lancer with the pigeons. But just as he uttered the words, Edmond Valentin heard a sound like the shrill yell of a small dog in the distance, and the next second there occurred near them a terrific explosion.

The deadly German artillery were getting the range!

Again and again came the familiar yell, followed by the inevitable crash. A dozen or so men were lying about him, shattered, dead, or dying.

But the pom-pom continued to deal death, slackening only now and then when a fresh belt was adjusted.

Adding to the roar of heavy guns, and quite close to them, lay the hidden fort of Pontisse, while forts Barchon, Evegnèe, and Fleron, on the heists across the river, were thundering and dealing death in the enemy’s ranks. Behind them, to the left, lay three other forts – Liers, Lanlin, and Loncin – defending the city of Liège, and forming a further portion of the ring.

Time after time their huge guns roared, and the very earth quaked. Time after time the enemy across the river were decimated by the terrible fire.

Then, every now and then, the ear was deafened by the loud crackling of musketry, which sounded like the loading of granite blocks into a cart. They were of two pitches, the deeper from the rifles of the infantry, and the sharper from the cavalry carbines. And above it all – above the constant explosions of shrapnel – sounded the regular pom-pom-pom-pom, steady as the tick of a rapid clockwork motor – adding to the deadly fire now sweeping the valley for nearly twenty miles.

Edmond, quite cool and determined, lay there firing away in the direction of the little puffs of grey smoke, which were hardly distinguishable behind the distant railway line. It was his first experience of being under fire, and after the first few minutes he grew quite unconcerned, even though he saw that many of his comrades had, alas! been bowled over. The primeval fury of the male beast bent on fighting, which seizes every man who is called upon to defend his life, had also seized him.

“They say that the French will be at Liège to-night,” remarked the onder-officier with the red moustache, in charge of the machine-gun. “If they are, we will teach those German brutes a lesson. We will – ”

Next instant he reeled and fell forward upon his face. A bullet entering his jaw had passed through his head, carrying with it a large piece of his skull. Death had been instantaneous. With hope of victory upon his lips the brave fellow had passed, in a single second, into that land which lies beyond the human ken.

The four Chasseurs serving the gun stopped and turned him over, but saw at once that he no longer lived.

A few seconds later Edmond heard sharp words of command from his lieutenant, who had crawled along to him, and in obedience he ceased firing his Mauser, took the dead man’s place and assumed charge of the machine-gun, which, within another half-minute, was continuing its work, while the body of the onder-officier was dragged aside.

“Curse the grey devils! They shall pay for that!” cried one of the men fiercely.

Just then, however, there came a lull in the firing. The shells had ceased, and the enemy was slackening in his attack all along the line.

Was the fight subsiding?

A dull, distant roar was heard from Boncelles, where the steel cupolas were rising, and the big guns hurling death at the grey hordes of the Kaiser, and then disappearing. Then silence.

Suddenly another loud crackling of rifles, and again Edmond’s pom-pom recommenced its rapid rhythmic rattle.

More Mausers crackling, the shrill yell of a shell passing over them, and then a blood-red explosion some distance behind them.

Another shouted word of command, and the whole line of rifles were again discharged. It seemed almost as a signal for the fight to recommence, for next moment the attack was renewed with redoubled vigour.

The short, sharp reports of the enemy’s artillery reverberated along the valley, and shells were now exploding unpleasantly near the trenches.

“I thought they had had enough,” growled one of the men to Edmond, in French, “but it seems they haven’t. Bien, we will show the Kaiser and his brigands that we mean defiance. See, over there, m’sieur! They are burning Visé, and Argenteau too! I lived in Visé when a boy. My sister is there now – unless she has escaped into Holland. I pray to God the poor girl has done so.”

“I sincerely hope she has,” Edmond declared. “It surely is no place for a woman down yonder.”

“Ah, mon vieux, they’ve been killing women and children, the savages,” growled another man with set teeth, as he took out a fresh belt of cartridges. “I heard so as we came along from Liège. But I can’t believe it to be true. The Germans are surely not savages, but a cultured race.”

“Culture?” snapped the first man, a somewhat rough, uncouth fellow, plainly of the peasant class. “If they were cultured, as it is said, they would not burn those undefended villages yonder, and massacre the inhabitants as they are doing. It is horrible – awful!”

“Ah, but the massacres are only hearsay,” Edmond remarked.

“No. One man, an eye-witness, has escaped from Visé. He swam the river, told the terrible truth, and the report was telephoned this morning to Brussels. I overheard our captain tell the major as we were on the march here. The Germans have shot down dozens of men and women, and even little children. Some of them have been deliberately burned alive in their homes. That, m’sieur, is the way Germany makes war! But surely that is not war – it is savage butchery, m’sieur. Culture, bah!”

And the man bent again to his gun.

Could those brave Belgians have seen what was, at that moment, happening in those unoffending villages about them, they would surely have left their trenches and, even regardless of the pitiless fire of the enemy, dashed to the rescue of the poor unoffending inhabitants. On that warm, bright sunlit August day, whole villages were being put to the sword by the ruthless soldiery of the Kaiser, upon the flimsy pretext that the villagers, being non-combatants, had fired upon the troops. Yet the truth came out that such massacres of the inhabitants were actually part of the general plan of campaign. The Kaiser had ordered those cold-blooded atrocities for purely strategical considerations. They were not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of marauding and buccaneering soldiers, but were ordered by Imperial command.

Over there, among those green hillsides sloping to the river, the Teutonic wave had burst its bounds. Fiendish tortures were being inflicted on helpless old men, women, and children. Peaceful villagers were hanged to trees, sometimes stark naked, and their bodies riddled by bullets. Innocent children were savagely sabred by German officers who, only a week before, were strutting in civilised drawing-rooms, the scented and elegant darlings of the ladies of Berlin.

At that hour, while Edmond Valentin crouched beside his newly acquired pom-pom, pouring a deadly fire away across the river, there were being enacted scenes of outrage, plunder, and massacre too terrible even to bear description – scenes in which blood-guilty ruffians of the great War Lord of Germany performed their grim and terrible work, a work so dastardly and inhuman as to have no parallel; atrocious acts actually ordered by the officers themselves, and which would for ever be handed down in history as an indelible blot upon the escutcheon of those blasphemous and barbarous brigands who loved to call their country the Fatherland.

That strip of green, smiling, undulating country between the German frontier and the Meuse, dotted by small prosperous villages, many of them filled by factory-hands and work-people, was that day swept by the fierce fiery hurricane of war, and so suddenly had it all come upon them that most of the people had not had time to realise what war meant ere they found the swaggering Uhlans clattering up the streets, shouting at and insulting the inhabitants, shooting down men, women, and children, and laughing heartily at the panic which their appearance caused.

From where Edmond Valentin was posted he could only see the columns of black smoke as it rose steadily from the farms and villages now burning in all directions. He, like nearly everyone else, disbelieved the stories of murder and mutilation, for they were really in credible. Surely the Kaiser would never treat little Belgium in such a manner after his Empire solemnly guaranteeing its neutrality!

If so, of what use were treaties? Why should anybody’s signature be honoured further, either in business or in social life?

Bang! There was a blood-red flash, the air was filled with blue-grey smoke and a poisonous odour which made one’s eyes smart. For a second, Edmond was staggered by the terrible force of the concussion, for he had been dealt a blow from behind which sent him reeling forward heavily. The air was filled with flying fragments, and he held his breath. It was as though an earthquake had occurred.

Then, when the smoke cleared, he saw a dozen of his comrades lying shattered about him, including two of the men at his gun. Not far away the scorched grass had been torn up, and a great hole showed in the brown earth.

He set his teeth, and bent over the two fallen men. One had been wounded in the stomach by a fragment of the shell, and was writhing on the ground in his death agony, uttering fearful curses upon the enemy and the Kaiser in particular; while the other, after a final convulsive shudder which shook his whole frame and told its own tale to anybody who had been under fire in battle, turned slowly over and then lay quite still.

The shell alas! had only been too truly placed, for not only were a dozen brave fellows lying shattered, but a splinter had also struck the breech of Edmond’s gun, and it had jammed in consequence.

When serving before with the Chasseurs he had been in charge of a machine-gun, and hence was thoroughly familiar with its mechanism. Therefore, quite calmly, as though no fight were in progress, he quickly unscrewed the parts, discovered that a pin was bent and knocked it straight, and within five minutes the pom-pom was again pouring forth, its rain of lead sweeping to and fro across the railway line opposite.

Suddenly, with a roar and flash, another earthquake occurred. The air instantly became filled with black acrid smoke and flying fragments of shell from one of the enemy’s howitzers beyond the hills, and at that moment the trench became a perfect inferno, for deadly shells were falling upon it, and dozens of Edmond’s comrades were being maimed or killed on every hand.

As the smoke cleared slightly he bent again to sight the gun, when his eye caught the bridge below, whereon the dastardly enemy had placed that vanload of brave Belgians as a parti-coloured screen.

Just as he looked, he saw a shell, fired deliberately by a German gunner, strike the van, explode, and next second there remained only a heap of wreckage, among which the twenty poor fellows who had been imprisoned in it were lying heaped, dead and dying, some of them shattered out of all recognition.

“The murderers!” cried Edmond, while his men, who also noticed what had happened, loudly cursed the ruthless barbarians with whom they now found themselves confronted.

Bang! The explosion was deafening. Edmond again felt the concussion where he was crouching. It knocked his shako aside, and for a second he believed he had been hit. Yet, by a miracle, he was unharmed.

Next second an order was shouted – the order to retire!

The Germans, now using their artillery and shelling the Belgian trenches, were advancing. They were crossing the bridge below, and a pontoon section had already begun its work under fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Shells were falling thickly now. Their defence had, alas! been all in vain. Edmond heard the order shouted in Flemish.

“Vlucht! Vlucht!” shouted the lieutenant. Edmond stood for a second like a man in a dream. The earth everywhere was being whipped by bullets.

Then he directed his men to dismantle the gun and, two others helping, each quickly shouldering a piece, the little party made off with the Chasseurs over the crest of the hill and down the other side, leaving behind them, alas! many hundreds of their poor comrades.

Bang! Yet another shell fell, rending a great hole in the trench at the very spot where, only a few moments before, Edmond Valentin’s gun had been standing.

Chapter Seven.
In the Eagle’s Claws

Two days later the Sixth Brigade, to which the Eighth Chasseurs belonged, had been christened by the men “The Flying Column,” for it had been designed to support the other brigades in action. Since their retreat from the Meuse, Edmond Valentin had marched with his regiment hither and thither; marched until he was footsore, with few intervals of rest, sometimes engaging the enemy, and then moving forward again to some new position, blindly, but with the knowledge that it was upon some general, previously conceived plan.

War is truly a strange experience. The mere man in the fighting-line shoots in a trench, lies low, smokes a cigarette and chaffs his comrades, shoots again, then advances – or retreats, as the case may be. Rumours pass from mouth to mouth of success or of defeat; he knows not which is the truth. Retire or advance, what does it matter? If one retires it is for strategic purposes; if one advances it does not mean victory. Edmond Valentin, sous-officier of infantry, was but a mere little pawn in that colossal game of world-power.

They had made a great détour around Liège, behind the forts of Lanlin, Loncin, and Flémalle, and as the fighting had now become intense near Fort Boncelles, they had been called up to assist the attacked brigade.

It was night when they reached the little village of Esneux, prettily situated on the river. On the previous day the place had been occupied by the Germans under Von Emmich, but the big guns from Boncelles had been turned upon them, and the Bavarians had been compelled to evacuate the place, not, however, before they had driven out the poor frightened inhabitants and sacked it. But the heavy shell-fire from the Boncelles fort had wrecked the town and set fire to it, so that when the Chasseurs arrived they found it only a heap of still smoking ruins.

About nine o’clock that evening Edmond’s company took up a position in a dark wood close to an old ruined château above the burnt-out village, but presently, with about thirty others, he was ordered out to the edge of the wood where the highroad ran to Liège. Once there, every one of them was left to his own thoughts, and Edmond, having fixed his gun in position in a ditch well covered behind a wall, sat back with his men, lit a cigarette and reflected.

He was thinking of Aimée, as he thought of her always every hour, wondering whether she had fled from Belgium, now that invasion was an accomplished fact. That day the wildest rumours had reached them – rumours of German successes everywhere, save at Liège. It was declared, from mouth to mouth, that the French had been driven back all along the line, and that the enemy were already marching through Holland on to Antwerp – German-made lies which were, later on, proved to have been circulated to create panic.

As they waited there, gazing anxiously across the river where blood-red glares showed away in the distance – farms and homesteads fired deliberately by the Uhlans – the moon rose brightly in the clear sky. Now and then could be heard the distant rumble of heavy artillery, while at infrequent intervals the forts of Embourg across the river and Boncelles on their left roared forth, showing sharp, angry flashes in the night.

Close by where Edmond had taken up his position was a small stone-built hut, roofless and in ruins; but upon its walls he noticed that a big white paper had been pasted.

He strode up to it, and in the moonlight examined it. The poster was one of the enemy’s proclamations which had been printed in Berlin in readiness months before, and he read as follows:

AU PEUPLE BELGE!

C’est à mon plus grand regret que les troupes Allemandes se voient forcées de franchir la frontière de la Belgique. Elles agissant sous la contrainte d’une nécessité inévitable la neutralité de la Belgique ayant été déjà violée par des officiers français qui, sous un déguisement, aient traversé le territoire belge en automobile pour pénétrer en Allemagne.

Belges! C’est notre plus grand désir qu’il y ait encore moyen d’éviter un combat entre deux peuples qui étaient amis jusqu’à présent, jadis même allies. Souvenez vous au glorieux jour de Waterloo où c’étaient les armes allemandes qui ont contribué à fonder et établir l’indépendance et la prospérité de votre patrie.

 

Mais il nous faut le chemin libre. Des destructions de ponts, de tunnels, de voies ferrées devront être regardées comme des actions hostiles. Belges, vous avez à choisir.

J’espère donc que l’Armée allemande de la Meuse ne sera pas contrainte de vous combattre. Un chemin libre pour attaquer celui qui voulait nous attaquer, c’est tout ce que nous désirons.

Je donne des garanties formelles à la population belge qu’elle n’aura rien a souffrir des horreurs de la guerre; que nous payerons en monnayé les vivres qu’il faudra prendre du pays; que nos soldats se montreront les meilleurs amis d’un peuple pour lequel nous éprouvons la plus haute estime, la plus grand sympathie.

C’est de votre sagesse et d’un patriotisme bien compris qu’il dépend d’éviter à votre pays les horreurs de la guerre.

Le Général Commandant en Chef l’Armée de la Meuse!

Von Emmich.

It was a proclamation which was now posted everywhere, not only in the districts occupied by the Germans, but it had also been secretly affixed to walls by spies in Liège, Louvain, Charleroi, and even in Brussels itself. By it, the Germans were hoping to secure the allegiance of the Belgian people.

While this proclamation expressed regret that the German troops found themselves obliged to cross the Belgian frontier, it pointed out that only necessity compelled them to do so because French officers had violated Belgian territory by crossing from France into Germany by motor-cars. A poor excuse surely for the burning and sacking of all those little undefended frontier towns – Visé, Argenteau, Soumagne, Poulseur, and the rest.

“Belgians?” it went on. “It is our great desire that there may still be means to avoid a combat between two peoples who were friends until now, and were formerly even allies. Remember the glorious day of Waterloo, where fought the German armies who contributed to found and establish the independence and prosperity of your country.

“But we must have an open road. Any destruction of bridges, tunnels, or railways must be regarded as hostile actions. Belgians, it is for you to choose!

“I hope, then, that the German army of the Meuse will not be compelled to wage war with you. An open way to attack those who wish to attack us: that is all we desire.

“I give these formal guarantees to the Belgian population: that it will suffer nothing from the horrors of war; that we will pay in gold for the provisions that we find necessary to take from your country; that our soldiers will show themselves to be the best friends of a people for whom we cherish the highest esteem and the greatest sympathy.

“By your wisdom and patriotism, which we fully recognise, your country will be spared the horrors of war.

“General Commander-In-Chief of the Army of the Meuse, —

“Von Emmich.”

And yet the poor inhabitants of Visé had been outraged and shot by the Kaiser’s unrestrained savages! In all those villages lying across the rippling Ourthe and the broad Meuse, the treatment of the inoffensive civilians had been ruthless and merciless. Removal from the face of the earth – a favourite phrase of the Germans themselves – was, from the first, the invader’s idea of how best to deal with the unarmed, unoffending villagers, the only crime of whose hard-working people was that they had fallen in the path of the blasphemous Prussian militarism.

A private who was reading the proclamation remarked to Edmond:

“What trickery – eh? I hear that the Uhlans yesterday shot the Burgomaster of Esneux, over yonder, and propped his body against a wall all day as a warning – because he had carried a revolver. Thirty men were afterwards shot in the Place without any trial whatever, and women and children were outraged and bayoneted and their bodies flung into the river. Our women, they say, are being treated infamously, and all the possessions of the villagers are being destroyed. May God curse those Germans!”

“Yes,” replied the sous-officier, and as he turned away with a sigh a red light behind the hill gradually appeared, and then quickly grew brighter. “There is another village on fire, over there. I suppose the Uhlans will drive our people to reprisals so that excuse for further cruelty may be found.”

“And yet they post up this proclamation!” cried the man in Flemish, and with the point of his bayonet he succeeded in tearing holes in the notice, and eventually mutilated and obliterated it, saying:

“Death to the Alboches! Death to the Kaiser’s murderers and brigands! After all, the Emperor who makes war upon women and children is only a brigand, just like those in Sicily. Surely a prize should be offered for his head!”

Just as the man spoke they both saw, in the distance, sudden little red flashes, which told that the troops were vomiting death upon the enemy again, so they dashed back to their ditch, while in the trees above them could already be heard the “phit” of the enemy’s bullets as they struck the branches.

Ere a few moments the order was given to fire, and quickly Edmond’s pom-pom again began its regular spitting of death, whilst on the flank their invisible batteries also opened fire with destructive shrapnel.

The night grew darker, and the moon became, for a time, obscured behind a bank of swiftly-drifting cloud. In the distance the fires lit up the battle scene with a red, sinister glare, while, far away upon the hills on the right, could be seen moving masses of Belgian soldiers, a Dantean vision of hell, and whilst the men lay in their shallow ditch firing away with monotonous regularity, bullets were whistling past, striking the trees, or flattening themselves with muffled noise in the earth.

The fight was a hot one. In front were the millions of the Kaiser, oncoming like a great irresistible tide, yet the gallant little Belgian army, which for years had been jeered at by every Frenchman, soldier or civilian, as a comic-opera force, were defending their country in a manner so patriotic and desperate that it held the whole world in surprise.

Confronted by a big and arrogant Empire, which for years had laid its cunningly-devised plots for their destruction, the Belgian army stood undaunted, and meant to strive on and defend their soil until France and Great Britain could come to their aid.

That the Germans should never take Belgium had been resolved in the hearts of all King Albert’s subjects, while His Majesty himself, in the uniform of a private of infantry, was daily in the trenches, and often spoke quiet, homely words of encouragement to private and general alike. The whole army knew how, two days before, he had been in the trenches at Herstal, and had given private soldiers cigarettes with his own hands. In some cases he had not, at first, been recognised, dressed in a shabby, dusty uniform, just like themselves.

But he was a king – a king eventually without a country – and his name will for ever go down in history as a wonderful example of self-denial, personal bravery, and of human sympathy with his crushed and desolated nation.

Suddenly, while Edmond was commanding his gun, a shrapnel burst just behind him. A bullet struck his water-bottle, and a splinter passing through it the water ran out down his leg. But at the same moment another bullet struck in the head a man to whom he was giving an order and he fell heavily forward on his face – dead.

In a moment the place seemed swept by lead. Two or three shells fell in quick succession, the enemy having apparently advanced to a long copse just across the river-bank.

“The brutes have occupied Esneux again, I believe,” remarked a man close by.

Away on the crest of one of the hills a small but very bright light showed. It was flashing in Morse code. A signaller quite near read it aloud.