The Log of a Noncombatant | Page 7

as the
second German bombardment and occupation of Termonde. Because of
superior artillery range, the attack had the cruel advantage of the man
who can strike and still stay out of reach. On that evening at six-thirty,
the Teutons sent a few warning shells into the debris, and then the first
column of scouts entered simultaneously by the two southern gates. It
was just at six-thirty that our party started back for Ghent.
As we crawled across on all fours the remaining beams cracked beneath
our feet and the Belgian engineers called on us to hurry. "Oh, Tiber!
Father Tiber," we thought as the last of us got across; but unlike
Horatius at the bridge, we were on the right side when engineers
applied the match to a small charge of dynamite, and the beams crashed
and the remaining planks of Termonde's bridge writhed and twisted in
the rushing waters.
Twenty-seven miles away, when we whirled through the gates of Ghent
later in the evening, we said "Au revoir" to Verhagen and the
mendicant priest, and went to our rooms. At midnight came a rap at the
door; my gray-haired alderman broke into the room, bursting with the
latest news, his eyes aflame with excitement.
"Revanche!" he exclaimed dramatically; "our enemies have paid for it
in blood!"
Sure enough, after a few preliminary shells--a sort of here-we-come
salvo--the head of the German column had entered, and a party of staff
officers, for purposes of reconnaissance, immediately mounted the
spire of the only remaining church. The officers of the Ninth German

Army Corps swept the landscape with their glasses, but the level plains
gave nothing to their sight. They saw only the ashes of Termonde, the
river, and the straight stretch of sandy roads and stucco hamlets
beyond.
They did not notice a valley of covered ground and a quarter-mile
stretch of trees and shrubbery, where three squads of Belgian field
artillery were neatly hidden. Here the men took cover at the first sound
of cannonade. Quietly in their retreat the Belgian artillery officers had
figured the range and elevation of the cathedral tower, not over fifteen
hundred yards away. Just as darkness was setting in and the figures in
the belfry were clearly visible, the battery sergeant sharply dropped his
arm.
"C-r-r-m-p-h!" coughed the field pieces as the gunners drew the levers
home. There were four sharp reports, four flashes of flame and smoke,
the crescendo moan of tons of flying steel--and the church tower, the
bells, and the German officers came crashing to the ground.

Chapter III
Captive

Up to the day that Luther and I went through the Belgian trenches near
Alost and got into the hands of the German outposts north of Brussels,
we had not seen nearly as much fighting as we wished. We had looked
upon the ear-marks and horrible results of battles; had heard guns,
smelt the blood and ether of wounded, and seen the ruins over which
had rolled the wave of battle. We knew that ahead of us there had been
much fighting in the Sempst-Alost-Vilvorde- Tirlemont region. The
Germans at that moment, if not actually advancing toward Antwerp,
were skirmishing and making feints in every direction, with the
ultimate disposition of their forces carefully concealed. Of course, we
had no official permission to be at the front with either army; in fact, up
to that point we had received nothing but official threats on the subject
of what would happen to us in case we went ahead. But as no one did
more than threaten, we kept on going, since we preferred that mode of

procedure to sitting around in Paris or Berlin on the chance of one of
those "personally conducted" tours of inspection, whose purpose is to
show the correspondent everything except actual fighting. It was our
hope during that early part of the war to see as much as possible of the
German army, realizing that, if captured, we should undoubtedly be
sent either backward or forward along the German line of
communication in conquered Belgium. Once within the German
outposts we pleaded like Brer Rabbit not to be thrown into the German
brier patch. So of course we landed in it. After a few days in Brussels
they shipped us Eastward to Aix-la-Chapelle by way of Lou-vain,
Tirlemont, and Liege.
It was two days after the second bombardment of Termonde--at 7 A.M.,
to be exact--that Luther and I started from Ghent for Brussels in a
military automobile, the property of the Belgian Government, and
again loaned for the occasion to Julius Van Hee, American Vice-
Consul, then Acting Consul at Ghent. We carried with us a United
States Government mail pouch, a packet of mail from Dr. Henry van
Dyke, at The Hague, addressed to Brand Whitlock,