Fighting in FlandersPowell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
History
Fighting in Flanders
Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Belgium
His exploits would provide material for a boy's book of adventure
and, as a fitting conclusion, he was decorated by the King.
Anyone who went to Belgium with hard-and-fast ideas as to social
distinctions quickly had them shattered. The fact that a man wore a
private's uniform and sat behind the steering-wheel of your car and
respectfully touched his cap when you gave him an order did not
imply that he had always been a chauffeur. Roos, who drove my car
throughout my stay in Belgium, was the son of a Brussels
millionaire, and at the beginning of hostilities had, as I think I have
mentioned elsewhere, promptly presented his own powerful car to
the Government. The aristocracy of Belgium did not hang around
the Ministry of War trying to obtain commissions. They simply
donned privates' uniforms, and went into the firing-line. As a result
of this wholehearted patriotism the ranks of the Belgian army were
filled with men who were members of the most exclusive clubs and
were welcome guests in the highest social circles in Europe. Almost
any evening during the earlier part of the war a smooth-faced youth
in the uniform of a private soldier could have been seen sitting amid
a group of friends at dinner in the Hotel St. Antoine. When an officer
entered the room he stood up and clicked his heels together and
saluted. He was Prince Henri de Ligne, a member of one of the
oldest and most distinguished families in Belgium and related to half
the aristocracy of Europe. He, poor boy, was destined never again
to follow the hounds or to lead a cotillion; he was killed near
Herenthals with young Count de Villemont and Philippe de Zualart
while engaged in a daring raid in an armoured motorcar into the
German lines for the purpose of blowing up a bridge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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