On the Road to Calais in 1914
several pages from 'the War Illustrated' on the Battle of the Coast in 1914
One evening in November, 1914, I found myself in Calais, attempting to get through to the Belgian lines at Furnes, The First Battle of Ypres was at it's height. Every German prisoner was telling how the German armies would, within the next week or two, sweep over the British defences, occupy Calais, and from there invade England.
Calais itself showed every evidence of war. The wounded were, pouring in by rail and road. Parties of refugees continued to arrive, miserable, bedraggled crowds of limping and sodden women and children - as pitiful objects as I have ever seen. Many things were unobtainable. For example, you could not buy a cigarette or a cigar in the town, nor if I remember right, a match. It was impossible to obtain a bed, for every hotel was crowded. I counted myself lucky to be allowed to lie that night on the long seat of a café. Unfortunately, the seat was very narrow; I am not particularly thin and two or three times I barely saved myself from tumbling on to the floor.
The railway was still open to Dunkirk. In the train early next morning I made friends with a railway guard proceeding to the front. In the old days he had been the chef-de-train of a famous international express ; now he was helping to convey goods to the front lines. Long before Dunkirk was reached we had sworn friendship. "Don't you worry," he said to me, " I will get you through somehow."
At Dunkirk there came a check. Guards were waiting at the railway station, and I found myself taken off under military escort to the French headquarters, Here a very interesting half-hour followed. Staff officer handed me over to Staff officer, each higher than the last. Finally I found myself in the presence of a very jolly and energetic French colonel. He started with a great show of indignation.
"What do you mean by coming here ?" he asked. "Do you know that this place has been declared in a state of siege ? No stranger is allowed in."
I apologised and pleaded ignorance. "Regard the notices !" thundered the officer as he showed me the proclamation of a state of siege on the walls. "You must go ! You must leave here !"
"But, my colonel," I interposed, "you would not send me off without giving me time to eat ? I started from Calais very early. I am very hungry. May I not stay here for a meal ?”
“You can stay here for thirty-six hours," he responded, greatly to my surprise, "but not a moment longer." And then he looked at me more: kindly. "But why do you come here ? This is not the place for you. All you have here is some fighting at sea or a Zeppelin dropping bombs on us. You want to go to Furnes."
A Friendly Guard on the Furnes Train
I told him that Furnes was where I was trying to reach. Would he give me a note to help me through ?"
“Jamais ! jamais I jamais !" he replied with the utmost emphasis. But the end of the interview was that my military escort was removed and I was allowed to walk through the streets alone.
As I went out of the headquarters I found my railway guard waiting for me, You could buy Belgian cigars in Dunkirk, although you could not in Calais. We discovered a restaurant where we ate solidly and grossly, as hungry men do, sausages and cabbage, a mysterious soup and the like and then we smoked the cheap Belgian cigars one after the other. "Never have I had such a meal since the war broke out," said the guard. "Now, my friend, come with me and we will go to Furnes."
We entered the railway station through a window Three times we nearly ran into a sentry, but at the end we found ourselves in the van of a long goods train. "Regardez donc," said the guard, ou speak no French. You say nothing. Leave it to me." He shut the door and left me alone.
Half an hour later the big train rumbled slowly out of Dunkirk eastward to Furnes.
That night we dropped off the train. two miles from our destination and made our way along the track. At Furnes Station, of course, we would have been arrested at once. It was raining heavily and pitch dark. We walked warily to evade wires and watched carefully for sentries. At one point we passed close to a French camp, and the wood fires burning outside the tentes abris, despite the rain, made a military picture worthy of Détaille.
It was not a pleasant walk. I was carrying a heavy pack, and was very glad when at last we got into Furnes. But here our troubles were by no means over. The quaint old Belgian town was crowded with troops and with wounded. Not a light was shown for we were within range of the German guns and a very easy mark for the German aeroplanes. Stumbling through the muddy streets, I went to house after house trying to find shelter.
There was an English hospital. After trying many oilier places, I asked the lady in charge there if I could rest in the outer corner of one of her tents. She was adamant. A general warning had gone out against correspondents during the past few days. They were 'to be arrested on sight. Lord Kitchener had sent a, special delegate to the Belgian. headquarters begging that stern measures should be taken against them. The lady naturally enough could not risk offending the authorities by letting me come in out of the rain.
Hospitality at the Eleventh Hour
Then, while I was making up my mind to spend the night in the muddy streets in the rain, the gates of Paradise opened. Someone told me of a Belgian house near by, the home of a Belgian diplomat. I knocked at the door, expecting nothing. Two dear old ladies opened it. They welcomed me in. They fussed over me. They made me change my soaked clothes, finding some, old garments of their own men folk for me, and that night I lay in a comfortable bed after a warm meal. Even the roaring of the guns outside and the sounds of the troops marching all night long under my window did not disturb me.
Next morning I was up early. Everything around spoke of war. Soldiers were everywhere - horse, foot, arid artillery. The thunder of the guns was ever in the air. Biplanes at intervals whirred overhead. Armoured motor-cars mounted with formidable machine-guns, rushed in and out. There was a constant procession of well-found motor-ambulances, among which the ambulances of the British Red Cross were splendidly to the front. Regiments were marching in tired out, the men having done their forty-eight hours in the trenches and twenty-four hours in reserve; and others were marching out to take their places.
My admiration for the Belgian troops, whom. I had seen at work earlier in the fighting around Termonde, grew as I came to know them more. It would be easy enough to criticise their professional military faults, but it would not be easy to do full justice to their temper and courage. They had not the high spirits of the French; I might almost describe them as grief-stricken men. War had meant for them the loss of all. Nearly every soldier was consumed with, anxiety concerning the fate of his women folk and of those near to him. They had fought till they were sick of slaughter. Yet, how they fought - doggedly, passionately, stubbornly.
I looked round. Furnes had received comparatively little damage, but the neighbouring district was one great ruin. There was no longer a Dixmude, except heaps of stories. Roulers, yesterday a great centre of the linen trade, was now chiefly marked by a high line of German corpses which lay outside it. Blankenberghe had been levelled flat for two miles along the front, in order to give the German guns free play. Nieuport was broken and scared, and pitted everywhere with shell fire. The people had mostly fled. Trade, commerce, farming had been wiped out. This was war !
I dared not tax too much the hospitality of my Belgian friends, and so I went to find some food for myself. In shop after shop I could discover nothing but a few bottles of olive oil and vinegar and some tins of tomato paste. Wine there was in abundance, and a fair supply of somewhat thin beer.
In one shop I lighted on some jars of beef extract. I grabbed at them eagerly and the lady of the shop laughed at me.
"Ah, monsieur ! They are only sample jars. There is nothing in them."
In another shop I was fortunate enough to find a couple of tins of sardines. Further on I discovered a soldier willing to sell part of his ration of that hard black sausage which, rightly or wrongly, I have always associated with horse-flesh. The sausage was at least solid and satisfying and so my food problem was solved.
That morning, walking between Furnes and Nieuport, along the banks of the St. George's Canal, I dropped into the midst of a pretty little fight. Some heavy German guns had been worrying us during the night and all the morning, unpleasant monsters, each with its different bark, and each bark more ugly than the others. However, the shells were not falling among us, and so there was nothing to be worried about. Suddenly there came a tremendous roar from seawards, followed by another. and another. It seemed as though the heavens were being, torn with shells shrieking over our heads.
Between British and German Fire
Some British monitors out at sea had located a German battery. We had noticed early in the morning a British aeroplane overhead; it had evidently found the range. The guns were at work! The incident was typical of modern war. Here I was standing between the German batteries inland and the British monitors out at sea. They were fighting each other and their shells were passing overhead. Yet I could see neither the monitors nor the German batteries. I could not even see the smoke of their bursting explosives. Nothing but the terrific noise overhead told me what was happening. After a little time the German fire died down and in twenty minutes the German batteries were wholly silenced.
Coming back into Furnes later in the day I ran foul of another German battery. A gun opened fire from a wholly unexpected quarter, quite close. A shell came tearing along, seemingly straight at me, tearing with a rasping, irregular noise, showing that the rifling of the gun was worn out. It dropped in a field just by. Four others followed it, not one of them exploding. It was very fortunate for me that they did not, or this story would probably not have been written.
I could not understand how the German lines could be so close, and I gazed across the fields expecting to see an advance of German infantry. The mystery was not explained until a few days later. Some German soldiers had concealed themselves in a farmyard amid some hay stacks. They had remained hidden when the Belgian troops took up their positions around Nieuport, and practically from the inside of our line they at intervals bombarded us. It was days, before they were located. They were brave men, but I am glad that their shells were bad.
One of the most thought-provoking sights in Furnes at this time was the large parties of grave-diggers setting out morning, noon and night for the different points of the line. One task that the soldier hates is grave-digging, and fatigue-parties for they are always made as small as possible. One afternoon, however, I saw no less than fifteen hundred men sent out at once in different companies for Dixmude.
"There are 37,000 German dead lying outside that town," one Belgian officer told me. "They are in rows, in stacks, in heaps. We must bury them or there will be an epidemic."
Like 'Reds" Of the Revolution Days
The next sight that stands out in my memory was the arrival of the French cavalry, the Chasseurs d'Afrique. We were very hardly pressed. The Germans were flinging great bodies of men against all our front lines, hoping to break through the Belgian ranks. But the Belgians stood firm, although companies were cut to the strength of platoons, and every shelter was filled with wounded men. Then the French came to our help - splendid cavalry, every man looking like a D'Artagnan, and grim, black-faced, eager young artillery-men. I saw a battery one day sweeping around to one of the hottest points in the line. The gunners were singing the "Marseillaise" as they hurried forward. I realised then, how the Reds of the Midi must have sung that song as they marched in the days of the great Revolution towards Paris.
How was I to get back home ? Again some friendly railway men helped me out. One evening, I made my way quietly to a railway clearing-house, where, a great Red Cross train lay waiting.
Hour after hour the motor-ambulances brought up their pitiful loads of wounded from the fighting-line near by. These were tragic and grief-stricken hours, even for the spectator. In those sombre shadows one saw much that was unspeakably pitiful, much that was indescribably brave.
That night I travelled down the wounded and the dying to Calais again. Our train was one of many, going towards the coast filled with men who had given themselves as sacrifices in the great fight that saved Calais and the French coast for France, and saved England from German invasion.
F.A. McKenzie
several pages from 'the War Illustrated' on the Battle of the Coast in 1914
