Fighting in Flanders | Page 4

Americans who described themselves as "attaches" and "consular
couriers" and "diplomatic messengers," and who intimated that they
were engaged in all sorts of dangerous and important missions. Many
of these were adventurous young men of means who had "come over to
see the fun" and who had induced the American diplomatic
representatives in London and The Hague to give them dispatches of
more or less importance-- usually less than more--to carry through to
Antwerp and Brussels. In at least one instance the official envelopes
with the big red seals which they so ostentatiously displayed contained
nothing but sheets of blank paper. Their sole motive was in nearly all
cases curiosity. They had no more business wandering about the
war-zone than they would have had wandering about a hospital where
men were dying. Belgium was being slowly strangled; her villages had
been burned, her fields laid waste, her capital was in the hands of the
enemy, her people were battling for their national existence; yet these
young men came in and demanded first-row seats, precisely as though
the war was a spectacle which was being staged for their special
benefit.
One youth, who in his busy moments practised law in Boston, though
quite frankly admitting that he was only actuated by curiosity, was
exceedingly angry with me because I declined to take him to the
firing-line. He seemed to regard the desperate battle which was then in
progress for the possession of Antwerp very much as though it was a

football game in the Harvard stadium; he seemed to think that he had a
right to see it. He said that he had come all the way from Boston to see
a battle, and when I remained firm in my refusal to take him to the front
he intimated quite plainly that I was no gentleman and that nothing
would give him greater pleasure than to have a shell explode in my
immediate vicinity.
For all its grimness, the war was productive of more than one amusing
episode. I remember a mysterious stranger who called one morning on
the American Consul at Ostend to ask for assistance in getting through
to Brussels. When the Consul asked him to be seated he bowed stiffly
and declined, and when a seat was again urged upon him he explained,
in a hoarse whisper, that sewn in his trousers were two thousand
pounds in bank-notes which he was taking through to Brussels for the
relief of stranded English and Americans--hence he couldn't very well
sit down.
Of all the horde of adventurous characters who were drawn to the
Continent on the outbreak of war as iron-filings are attracted by a
magnet, I doubt if there was a more picturesque figure than a little
photographer from Kansas named Donald Thompson. I met him first
while paying a flying visit to Ostend. He blew into the Consulate there
wearing an American army shirt, a pair of British officer's
riding-breeches, French puttees and a Highlander's forage-cap, and
carrying a camera the size of a parlour-phonograph. No one but an
American could have accomplished what he had, and no American but
one from Kansas. He had not only seen war, all military prohibitions to
the contrary, but he had actually photographed it.
Thompson is a little man, built like Harry Lauder; hard as nails, tough
as raw hide, his skin tanned to the colour of a well-smoked
meerschaum, and his face perpetually wreathed in what he called his
"sunflower smile." He affects riding-breeches and leather leggings and
looks, physically as well as sartorially, as though he had been born on
horseback. He has more chilled steel nerve than any man I know, and
before he had been in Belgium a month his name became a synonym
throughout the army for coolness and daring. He reached Europe on a

tramp-steamer with an overcoat, a toothbrush, two clean handkerchiefs,
and three large cameras. He expected to have some of them confiscated
or broken, he explained, so he brought along three as a measure of
precaution. His cameras were the largest size made. "By using a big
camera no one can possibly accuse me of being a spy," he explained
ingenuously. His papers consisted of an American passport, a
certificate of membership in the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, and a letter from Colonel Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of
Militia, authorizing him to take pictures of Canadian troops wherever
found.
Thompson made nine attempts to get from Paris to the front. He was
arrested eight times and spent eight nights in guard-houses. Each time
he was taken before a military tribunal. Utterly ignoring the
subordinates, he would insist on seeing the officer in command. He
would grasp the astonished Frenchman by the hand and inquire
solicitously after his health and that of his