|
The coast
retreat
OCTOBER 20, 1918
|
 |
|
Despite the moonlight,
nothing was visible of the departing hosts, but through the still air came
the rumble of endless wheels
|
|
“They are off!” was the exclamation all along the Dutch frontier last night as the tramp of the retreating German Army resounded like a muffled reverberation through the silence. It is impossible to express the sense of relief experienced on both sides of the frontier when it was realised that the evacuation had actually come to pass.
|
For four years Germany’s presence on the FIanders coast has been a perpetual nightmare. The peaceful folk who dwell in these regions have lived under a yoke of slavery without parallel in the history of modern Europe, daily witnesses of murder, butchery, forced labour, violence, and brutality. They have seen husbands torn from wives, children from parents, young girls subjected to nameless indignities. The deliverance has come in the end so unexpectedly as to be bewildering. The Germans had fortified the coast till they believed it to be impregnable. And all this has been silently forsaken in the dead of night.
It happened so simply as to come as an anticlimax. Watchers near the frontier town of Eede awaiting the great retreat had few incidents to beguile the tedium of their vigil. A German deserter afforded comic relief. He was cook to the frontier guard post. He carried a bag in his hand. A German officer of the guard approached the high fence shutting off the frontier to inquire as to the deserter who, fortunately for himself, had made good his escape. It was not the man himself who excited the officer’s solicitude, but the fact that he had made off with several cheeses, the food supply of the guard, but he saw it was impossible to recover either the man or the cheeses. When asked whether it was true that the English were at Eecloo, he replied: “No, thank God. It has not got so far as that.” By and by, however, a voice shouted in German from the other side of the frontier: “We are leaving at 3 o’clock tonight.”
Troops in full field order, with boxes and packages in hand, set out along the frontier road towards the east. They were followed later by the frontier guards. Despite the moonlight, nothing was visible of the departing hosts, but through the still air came the rumble of endless wheels and the measured footfall of seemingly interminable detachments of troops. These were the sounds of an army, and a great army, in retreat.
|
The agony
of Lille
OCTOBER 19, 1918
|
 |
|
The streets for miles
were a surging mass of people, chiefly women and children, who had been
waiting since the Germans had gone
|
|
From Our Special Correspondent. My visit to Lille was as wonderful an experience as any man could hope to have in a lifetime. Two or three hours before, an officer of the Liverpool Regiment, with his men, had gone into the town and made an official call on the Mayor. A small party of French and Belgian correspondents also made their way in, but I was the only Englishman.
|
The streets for miles were a surging mass of people, chiefly women and children, who had been waiting since the Germans had gone in the darkness of the early morning. A rumour spread that I was “the English General”, though whether Sir Douglas Haig, General Birdwood, or General Haking I do not know. It was useless to deny it, for who could argue with a hundred thousand people mad with joy, and on me was poured all the gratitude for its deliverance of the population which has suffered so much through four years. It was necessary to walk some miles through the streets, battling every yard through cheering, laughing, sobbing women and children, and a few men. I was showered and heaped with flowers and draped with Tricolour flags and streamers. Fifty times I must have saved babies, thrust at me to be touched or kissed, from being trampled underfoot. The women struggled to touch or kiss some part of a hand or cheek or clothes. Men fought to grip one’s hand. For mile after mile the crowd continued — one mass of shouting, cheering, weeping humanity — and the cries, hailing one as “saviour” and “deliverer”, mingled with shouts of “Vive l’Angleterre!” and the refrain “Nous avons tant souffert, mon general, nous avons tant souffert,” are things no man could ever forget.
But for the help of some men who made a phalanx round me, I doubt if it would have been possible to reach the Mayor’s residence. Finally even this phalanx became powerless, and from the Mayoralty a bodyguard of gendarmes was provided to take me back to the canal, beyond which my car was waiting. The car was heaped with flowers, and the chauffeur told me he had been kissed by more people that afternoon than in all his life before. It was a truly wonderful experience, which brought home, as nothing else, what the German captivity and their deliverance have meant to the people of France.
|
The battle
in Flanders
|
 |
|
The advance on
Valenciennes has been made today by Canadian and English troops who had by
noon reached the railway on the immediate southern edge of the city
|
|
On the front of the Allied attack in the north which began yesterday morning we continue to push the enemy back upon the line of the Scheldt, while in the Valenciennes area we have this morning forced our way so closely up to the southern edge of the city that you may possibly hear tonight that Valenciennes is in our hands. The position of the. Germans there must now be nearly intolerable.
|
In the northern attack the British share was comparatively small, all the troops of the Second Army had to do being to clear the triangle of ground for a distance of some five or six miles along the west side of the Scheldt from near Avelghem up to the neighbourhood of Meersche. The greater part of this job was accomplished yesterday when I telegraphed, and the rest has been satisfactorily finished. After going through the southern part of the village of Anseghem, Scottish and Welsh troops this morning pushed on through Gyselbrechteghem, south of the Audenarde railway towards Elseghem, while other Scottish troops - namely, Rifles and Borderers - kept pace with them on their right, and below there Lancashire men and Durharns cleared the river bank by Berchem towards Meersche. Among them the British troops had up to last evening taken something over a thousand prisoners, and this figure may by now be a good deal exceeded.
An interesting and characteristic item of the booty taken in the southern area was a party of four German ambulances in the Waermaerde vicinity, which, having a legitimate load of wounded on the beds below, were laden above with booty plundered from the villages.
Pushing up behind our troops, our guns have today been industriously shelling enemy troops and transport on the roads into and out of Audenarde. On our immediate left the French troops which went through the northern part of Anseghem had some trouble yesterday afternoon with very strong positions in Anseghem Chateau. The place was full of machine-guns, and the Germans fought stubbornly, and it was not until after hand-to-hand fighting that the French finally got possession. That obstacle disposed of, the French this morning were travelling fast. Pushing on along the north side of the railway, they had at noon today reached a line by Eekhout and Mooreghem, only about three miles west of Audenarde, and the whole river bank to this point is now in our hands.
THE AMERICANS’ PART.
On the left of the French, American troops in touch with the French by Worteghem, after forcing a crossing of the Gaverbeek and capturing Waereghem yesterday, had last night reached the Zandbeek by Nellekenskeer and, going on today, were at noon reported to be close to Nokere. The Americans seem to have had the hardest fighting around one of the largest of those patches of woodland of which I spoke yesterday - namely, Spitaals Woods, north-west of Mooreghem. The woods were strongly held, and protected with wire and machine-guns, but, working like old soldiers, the Americans made their way round them, and those of the garrison who were not killed or escaped were made prisoners. While no figures are available, the total number of prisoners in the combined operation promises to be large.
All this country is thickly settled, and the Germans last night had set a number of farms on fire, which kept the hours of darkness brilliant and made the advance of the French and Americans in the early morning very easy. In other farms and hamlets are large numbers of civilians, and the Germans, falling back, fought from and among the buildings in Boer fashion. We hesitated to use the guns because of the innocent inhabitants, and the infantry therefore had to go forward without artillery, and the work was done by individual fighting with rifle and bayonet.
I told yesterday how the Germans, as they fall back, shell with gas shells the farms and villages where civilians are, and many of these have been taken to our hospitals. Our men do all they can to protect civilians by giving them gas masks, which they strip from German prisoners, and are trying to make them get out of the area; but it is difficult to persuade civilians not to cling to shelters in cellars and so forth, which have so far proved their salvation, but where it is impossible for them to live always in their masks.
On the north side of the railway, in the French area south of Worteghein, is the highest ground in this region near the woods and village of Boschkant, where, at a point known as Hill 83 the ground rises to a height of 250ft. above the sea, which in this flat land is much. If anywhere on this side of the Scheldt and Audenarde the Germans might have been expected to hold our advance, it was here, but at the French approach they fell back from the hill and Bosch- kant Ridge, and apparently through all this area are getting away to the other side of the river. As suggested yesterday, with our positions pushed forward to the line of the Scheldt here it will seemingly be impossible for the enemy to remain on his present line on the north in front of Ghent.
The advance on Valenciennes has been made to-day by Canadian and English troops, who, pushing on from a line by Pamars, had by noon reached the railway, where it crosses between the Scheldt Canal and the Rhonelle, on the immediate southern edge of the city. The advance was covered by a great concentration of guns, and, though the enemy artillery yesterday and on the preceding day was active, this morning the fire was feeble in the earlier part of the day though strengthening later. The Canadians took large numbers of machine-guns and one field-gun on the way, as well as a number of prisoners, who know the latest news and bitterly complain of Germany’s betrayal by all her allies in turn. The weather today is once more fine.
No comments:
Post a Comment