'The Campaign Round Liége'

A Daily Telegraph War Book by J. M. Kennedy 1914

 

Explaining Battles to the Public

A Belgian fort

 

Chapter V

PREPARATIONS AT NAMUR - SCENES AT LIEGE GERMANS PRESSING FORWARD - OCCUPATION OF BRUSSELS

In the meantime the second stronghold of the Belgian army, Namur, was prepared for the onslaught of the enemy. On August 13th Mr. Granville Fortescue, who had arrived there, noted that the city exhibited all the grim circumstances of a siege except the actual falling of shells within its boundaries. When he arrived at the station he followed the crowd, which was herded into a corner until each passenger had been examined. One could not move without a laissez-passer. Soldiers patrolled the streets, and every few hundred yards pedestrians were halted and made to show their papers. Barricades commanded all the main avenues into the city. They had been made by dragging enormous goods vans across the street and turning the van into a sort of blockhouse. The sides were pierced for rifle fire, and sand bags were piled breast-high inside.

Defences of sand bags and earth were built at either side of the van.

Suddenly the whirl of an aeroplane sounds overhead. Then we hear a scattered volley. The aeroplane is German and the garrison are trying to pot it, despite the fact that it must be 2,000 feet up. They are striking in appearance, these German aeroplanes. Once seen it is easy afterwards to distinguish them. Seen from directly below, it is best described as scarab shaped - what I should imagine a giant scarab would look like on the wing. The whole machine is white, except for a panel of sky blue painted across the centre of each wing. The engine of the German machine makes a louder noise than either the French or Belgian. The aeroplane we were watching circled above the forts and remained in this vicinity about half an hour. Then it turned about and disappeared to the east.

The Kaiser, with three of his sons, left Berlin on August 17th for Mayence, about 100 miles to the north of Strassburg; but he did not venture upon Belgian soil.

An English officer who returned to England from Brussels at this time had had the most interesting experience, and, it should be added, privilege, of chatting with one of the heroic defenders of Liege, a Belgian officer. To a representative of The Daily Telegraph he said:

“I never had any doubt that the Belgians were plucky fellows. The defence of Liége shows them in heroic light.

One of them, in the course of a casual conversation, which would not have given you any idea that he, or any of his colleagues, had taken part in anything extraordinary, said: "Some of us late arrivals only managed to get to our posts when the German attack began. It was night-time. We replied sharply with our guns. Until the dawn came we had no very distinct idea of what our practice was. Then we noticed heaps of slain Germans in a semi-circle at the foot of our fort. The German guns must have been much less successful, because they rarely hit us that night. They did better at daybreak. We did better still.

"As line after line of the German infantry advanced, we simply mowed them down. It was terribly easy, monsieur, and I turned to a brother officer of mine more than once and said, 'Voila'! They are coming on again, in a dense, close formation! They must be mad!' They made no attempt at deploying, but came on, line after line, almost shoulder to shoulder, until, as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped one on top of the other, in an awful barricade of dead and wounded men that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble. I thought of Napoleon's saying-if he said it, monsieur; and I doubt it, for he had no care of human life !-' C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!' No, it was slaughter-just slaughter !

"So high became the barricade of the dead and wounded that we did not know whether to fire through it or to go out and clear openings with our hands. We would have liked to extricate some of the wounded from the dead, but we dared not. A stiff wind carried away the smoke of the guns quickly, and we could see some of the wounded men trying to release themselves from their terrible position. I will confess I crossed myself, and could have wished that the smoke had remained!

"But, would you believe it, this veritable wall of dead and dying actually enabled these wonderful Germans to creep closer, and actually charge up the glacis? Of course, they got no farther than half way, for our maxims and rifles swept them back. Of course, we had our own losses, but they were slight compared with the carnage inflicted upon our enemies.

The English officer added:

“There is, as you know, quite a large colony of English people in Brussels, and also in Bruges. They have their English club and tennis courts. Many of these Britishers have their own houses, and live in Belgium for three or six months every year. When the war broke out all but those owning, or renting, property were advised to leave the country, which they did. Many English householders in Belgium also closed their residences and left for England.

"The Belgians were at first extremely dubious of our intention to send troops to Belgium to support them, and night after night, at a certain well-known seaside resort, they crowded about the British Consulate for news. When it was definitely known that the British Expeditionary Force had started Belgian men and women asked for the Union Jack to be brought out by the Consul, and when this was done they filed past, kissing it. I saw this with my own eyes."

On the 18th it became evident that the German forces had gathered on the line Maastricht-Liége and were about to make an attempt to penetrate the allied armies facing them. There was no serious fighting on this date, but German cavalry were seen in the direction of Antwerp.

The long-expected battle appeared to have begun on the 19th (Wednesday), and Tirlemont, a town some twenty-three miles from Brussels, on the railway to Liege, was said to be its centre.

Refugees hurried into Brussels from Aerschot and Diest, and hundreds of civilians from Tirlemont also made for the capital.

Saarburg was occupied by the French on the same day.

The great German advance on Belgium was begun on Friday, August 21st, in a line extending from Dinant, a town to the south of Namur, as far as a point Opposite Antwerp. About noon Brussels was reached and occupied. The following account of the position of the Belgian Government was issued officially just before the capital was transferred to Antwerp:

At the present moment the general situation in the Belgian theatre of war may be described as follows: After having lost a great deal of time, a large number of men, and a great quantity of material, the Prussian army has managed to gain ground on both banks of the Meuse up to a line where it is in contact with the allied armies. The German troops on the north side of the Meuse belong to various corps, whose operations have been principally directed against Liege, and who in the course of time have become available in other directions. There is also a strong force of cavalry, by means of which the Germans have been able to make a show by extending to the north and south.

In the south they came into collision with our troops and the French troops, and were repulsed. In the north, on the other hand, they found an open road, and small portions of them managed to make dashes far afield. In a word, the Germans have taken the measure of our position, but that they should have lost a fortnight in attaining this result is all to the honour of our arms. That may have incalculable consequences for the issues of the operations. The normal development of the latter, according to the plan concerted between the allies, may lead to the carrying out of "manoeuvres," that is to say, to changes of position in order to effect a change in the general situation.

We are on the outside wing, where these manoeuvres are nearly always necessitated, either for the direct or indirect protection of the flank. Our army, therefore, must necessarily modify its original posi- tions, and thus carry out completely the first task devolving upon it, which consists in gaining time. There is, consequently, no ground for anxiety if the army makes a movement in such and such a direction, and armchair strategists need not occupy themselves with the arrangements made, but should realise that our army now belongs to a co-ordinated whole, and remember that the strategic conditions have entirely changed since close contact has been established with our allies on our right.

The object of the operations as at present going on is not to cover such and such a district or such and such a town, which has now become a matter of only secondary importance. The pursuit of the aim assigned to the Belgian troops in the general plan of campaign preponderates over everything. This object cannot be revealed, and the most well-informed persons are unable to discover it in view of the veil of obscurity which is rightly being spread over all the news allowed to come through regarding the operations.

Fighting is going on along the whole front from Bale to Diest. The closer the contact comes between the two armies and the closer one gets to a decisive action, the more one must expect to see an advantage gained at one point while ground is lost at another. That is only to be expected in the case of battles taking place over such immense fronts as those occupied by the great armies of modern times.

To sum up, one may say that what is going on at our gates is not the only thing to be thought of. A strategic movement conceived with a well-defined object is not necessarily a retreat. The fighting which has taken place at the front during the last few days has resulted in making the enemy more circumspect and in delaying his forward march to the great advantage of the whole scheme of operations. There is no reason at the present time for letting oneself be hung up, thus playing into the hands of the Germans. That is the motive of the movements now being carried out. We are not beaten, far from it, but are making arrangements for beating the enemy in the best possible conditions. The public should, in this matter, place all trust in the commander of the army, and should remain calm and confident.

The outcome of the struggle does not appear doubtful. Meanwhile the newspapers should abstain from mentioning movements of troops, as secrecy is essential for the success of the operations.

The exodus from Brussels was vividly described in a telegram from Mr. A. J. Rorke, the correspondent of the Central News Agency. He wired, under date of August 20th :

“I left Brussels at three o'clock this morning, with the Germans at its very gates.

All through the evening, following the evacuation of Tirlemont, Louvain, and neighbouring villages, there had been coming into the city from all the roads leading into it one unending procession of old men, women, children, and wounded soldiers retreating before the advance of the Uhlan vanguard.

They came into the centre of the city, clamouring at the Gare du Nord for tickets to the coast, but the trains were all reserved for the hosts of wounded brought in by motor-ambulances and carts from the firing-line.

Most of the men had been wounded in the head and face, disproving the repeated stories that the Germans were bad marksmen and aimed low.

As a matter of fact, practically all the men wounded in yesterday's battle were hit high, proving that the Germans, infantrymen and cavalrymen, are firing from the hip.

Later came the news that there would probably be no more trains out of Brussels, so the more timid of the population began to prepare hurriedly for departure.

A dramatic moment in the history of Europe occurred when the Civic Guard, unwillingly, and only on instructions from the Executive Government at Antwerp, abandoned their defensive on the outskirts of the city, and in the forest around the town, and marched into Brussels.

They were ordered to Ghent, and singing, with unbroken spirit, the "Marseillaise," the strains of which rose over the murmurs of a panic-stricken population, they entered the railroad station.

And so Brussels, undefended, evacuated by its troops unwillingly, though their going really showed a finer spirit of patriotism than death on a battlefield, awaited the arrival of the "modern Huns."

Just before I left early this morning a rumour, which at that hour I was unable to confirm, spread through the city that the French had airived, and that the Turcos were actually in action with the Germans on the Louvain road.

These facts must stand out in the battle of yesterday.

One long line of burning villages marked the German advance, and three regiments of Belgian troops are no more. They are, I hear, the First Regiment of Guides and the Third and Ninth Regiments of the Line.

A weeping woman whom I took into my automobile drew from her breast, on the road to Ghent, a blue cap with a yellow facing, upon which was the figure "Voila une casquette d'un de nos braves petits soldats,” she said to me, "mais il n'y a plus du Troisieme."

As Mr. William Maxwell pointed out, the real capital of Belgium, in the military sense, had always been Antwerp, not Brussels; and Napoleon himself gave one of his generals to understand, in explicit terms, that there could be no glory in entering the undefended capital of an enemy's country. "Most of the country the Germans have overrun up to the present," said Mr. Maxwell, "has not been seriously contested, for it does not enter into the Allies' plan of action." Antwerp, as an important Belgian official explained, was provisioned for an indefinite period; it could be supplied with stores of every kind from the sea; and it was calculated that the forts would be able to hold out for at least a year. In these circumstances the Belgian army entrenched there would always be a menace to the right wing of the Germans, who would be obliged to detach a large part of their forces to prevent an attack from that direction.

Great indignation was aroused all over Europe when it became known that the Germans had imposed a war levy on Brussels of no less a sum than £8,000 the alternative being the sacking of the city, with all its priceless art treasures. A levy of £2,000,000 had already been imposed on the province of Liege.

The Germans made their entry into Brussels at two o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, August 21st To the eternal credit of the people it must be said that they betrayed not the slightest sign of panic, but faced their painful uncertainty with dignity and courage.

The Civil Guard, of whom 20,000 were in Brussels, were uniformed men, and may be compared to our old volunteers. They had made preparations to resist the capture of the city, and had covered the approaches with trenches and barbed wire entanglements. But Brussels is not a fortified place, and armed opposition would have involved severe penalties. The Guard, therefore, withdrew from the capital soon after midnight. They retired with the honours of war, singing songs of victory.

For some days the citizens had recognised the possibility of having the Germans for their uninvited guests, and when Louvain was abandoned they accepted the inevitable. The spirit they manifested was reflected in a dignified and courageous proclamation by their burgomeister.

At six o'clock in the morning the enemy's cavalry appeared at Tervueren, a distant suburb of the capital. From that hour every door was closed, and every window was darkened with shutter or blind. From the outskirts people began to flock into the heart of the city, yet there was no panic-fear. At nine o'clock the capital was surrounded, but no entry was made until after two o'clock. The occupation proceeded with method. Railway stations and telegraph and telephone offices were taken over, and sentries were posted on all the main roads. The city, which was crowded twelve hours before, looked like a deserted place.

Pushing on from Brussels the same evening, the Germans took possession of the undefended cities of Ghent and Bruges, and advance brigades of cavalry made their appearance at Ostend, which was occupied shortly afterwards. This advance -of no military importance, and savouring of what is colloquially known as window-dressing - was more than compensated for by a series of French successes in Alsace-Lorraine. General Joffre's forces drove the Germans out of several of the smaller towns, captured many hundreds of prisoners, and took ninety-one guns from the enemy.

Coincidentally with the arrival of the Germans in Brussels, it was announced that this country would lend our Belgian allies the sum of £10,000,000 in recognition of their splendid services at the beginning of the war.

The first complete account of the fighting at Dinant a few days previously was given in a special message from Mr. Granville Fortescue. Writing from Dinant on August 15th, Mr. Fortescue said:

A considerable force of German light infantry, supported by mountain batteries, to-day made a determined attack on this town. The fight lasted from daylight till dark. Although the Germans had some success in the morning, the arrival of French reinforcements compelled them to evacuate the excellent positions they had taken.

The first shell just missed the clock above the railroad station, which marked ten minutes past six, and fell through the roof. It did little damage beyond shattering numerous windows. The railroad station is directly opposite my hotel. The second shell tore through the chimney of the hotel. The kitchen was rifiled with bits of bricks and mortar. The breakfast coffee was spoiled.

Captain X., who was here on a special mission, made his escape in a motor, accompanied by a squad of khaki-clad couriers on motor-cycles. The guests of the hotel scuttled to the cellars.

It was nearly seven o'clock before the infantry began firing in earnest. The only French troops in the town were some of a regiment of the line. The French had no artillery when the action opened.

The position was in a certain state of defence, which might have been improved. However, the streets were barricaded and a field of wire entanglements stretched across the bridge, which was also commanded by a mitrailleuse.

Dinant lies in a well, one might say, on both banks of the Meuse. High limestone cliffs tower above the town. On the east bank these are steep, and are crowned by an ancient fort known as the citadel.

The fort dominates the whole adjacent country. On the west bank of the Meuse the town scrambles up a hillside, covered with trees.

When the engagement opened I joined Commandant A. and Lieutenant B., who were in charge of the detachment defending the bridge.

At this time the Germans were making a strong effort to capture the citadel. It was held by a small French force, perhaps one company.

The cliffs resounded with the rifle and gun fire. The din and the falling shells drove the population en masse to the "caves."

Members of the Volunteer Hospital Corps, however, hurried along on their bicycles searching the streets for wounded.

The German mountain batteries fired with accuracy, although the small projectiles had little effect. I picked up the fuse of one shell, a Dapp, cut at 4,000 metres.

About ten o'clock the Germans held the crest of the cliffs across the river, and soon took the citadel. They sent down a veritable hail of lead on the defenders. Behind the cover of the bridge abutments the French reply gallantly. Thus the fight goes on for an hour. One hears nothing save the irregular explosions of rifles, the machine-like sputterings of the mitrailleuse, punctuated by the shock of shell fire. It rains, but this in no way halts the firing. About thirty wounded are brought in when the French troops change position to the high ground back of the town. A sudden increase in the volume of sound tells me that the wished-for reinforcements have arrived. Soon a half-company of a regiment crowd into the hotel, expecting to find there a good field of fire. They bring with them a dozen frightened women who have been hiding in the station.

About noon the firing slackens, and the rain ceases. A few limping figures in blue coats and red trousers stagger into the hotel. A doctor stationed here gives them first-aid attention. While the lull continues a woman crosses to the pillar-box and drops in a postcard.

About one I return to my post of observation. The German flag has been hoisted over the citadel. This is a signal for renewed firing. The sight of the hated flag seems to rouse the French troops to fury. About 2 p.m. I hear for the first time the welcome sound of French field artillery. One of the first shots cuts the German flag across. Two French batteries have arrived, and they hail projectiles into the citadel with extraordinary accuracy. Another line regiment arrives to reinforce the troops here, and under a smothering fire I see the heads of the Germans that dotted the ramparts of the fort begin to disappear. At this time I also hear heavy firing in the south-east. About ten minutes before six 3 cannot distinguish a German on the ramparts The only firing is some scattered shooting from the French side. A cheer greets the coming of another new regiment, and soon the French troops are back in the positions they held in the morning.

But the road back of the bridge is dotted with the dead. They lie in all sorts of contorted positions. Their blue coats are splashed with red, their red trousers are stained a deeper crimson.

And the cheers of the troops who have just arrived die down as they pass this grim testimony of what war means.

As it was the intention of the French to hold the Dinant bridge at all hazards, their strongest force was placed behind the abutment wings of this bridge. These are limestone block walls, about three feet high, and offer good cover. But this cover would have been vastly improved if the walls had been capped with sandbags. There was plenty of time to have so improved this defence. Again, the field of fire before this position was poor. But the gravest mistake was the neglect to construct protected approaches to the advanced position. Reinforcements had to be rushed across an open field of fire, where they suffered unnecessary casualties. And when the French line of defence had to be changed, and the troops withdrawn to a higher position behind the town, they suffered heavily because they must pass along a road swept by the German fire. All of which should have been provided against. This is not written in a spirit of criticism, but simply to call attention to certain mistakes that will, in the future, surely be corrected.

The French are under a severe handicap in the matter of uniform. It is over a dozen years since the Boer War, and certainly they should have discarded the blue coat and red trousers for a more neutral colour. They have covered the red crown of their caps with blue. This is to prevent their being discovered by aeroplane scouts. But the flamboyant uniform of the line regiments makes a fair mark, as far as the modern rifle is effective. In groups they are all the gunner asks for a target.

On the other hand, the Germans have adopted a grey-green colour that is almost invisible. Yesterday, with a first-class glass, I had difficulty in locating individuals.

What I have written applies with more force to the Belgian troops. These soldiers are as conspicuous as claret stains on a new tablecloth.

On my way here I passed some four or five regiments of infantry. Though the men are young, they are going into this war with a seriousness unusual in the French. Of course, the Gallic temperament is not changed. They still show their "esprit" and their gaiety is not altogether extinguished. Perhaps the solemnity I have alluded to is more noticed among the officers than the men. They are as grave as schoolmasters. All of which is a good sign.

I have been particularly struck by the professional atmosphere of the artillery officers. It needs but a glance of the eye to be sure that this arm will perform splendid service under their direction.

The Germans had so many men massed in the occupied portions of Belgium by this time that temporary checks did not stem what one correspondent aptly described as a tidal wave of troops sweeping irresistibly through the valley of the Meuse. Japan, who had sent Germany an ultimatum with regard to Kiao-Chau, declared war on receiving no reply by the stipulated time; but, it is unnecessary to add, this fact had no influence on the operations of the German troops in Belgium. Telegrams sent off on Sunday stated that a big battle was developing in the neighbour-hood of Charleroi-Mons, and that the Germans in order to ensure the uninterrupted and safe passage of their army, had occupied all the villages between Louvain and Alost. The Liege forts, it was officially announced, were still holding out, but the Germans had "contained" them by a large force of soldiers. Attention was rather concentrated on the forts at Namur, to subdue which the Germans had advanced their heavy siege guns. It was said on Monday, August 24th, that "Namur had fallen," but no confirmation of this statement could be obtained, and it was generally taken as meaning that the invaders had managed to enter the town, but that the forts were still holding out. An official message from Brussels on the following Wednesday evening said that Namur had not yet fallen.

In the meantime refugees were hurrying from Ostend, to which city both Belgian and German wounded were being brought. The cross-Channel steamers were crowded, and Belgian refugees who had come away from Brussels and Tirlemont made their appearance in London.