From the Trenches: Louvain to the Aisne, the First Record of an Eye-WitnessYoung, Geoffrey Winthrop
History
From the Trenches: Louvain to the Aisne, the First Record of an Eye-Witness
Young, Geoffrey Winthrop
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
As I circled towards Diest, the roads were choked with munition and
reinforcements. A column of infantry wheeled to take up a position in
a beet-field on our left. A squadron of cavalry in the brown busby
clattered past to head off Uhlans reported on our right. The village
streets were barricaded with waggons; but the crowds of anxious,
waiting women, boys, and children laughed and chaffed back at us as
we waited at the barriers on the roads for a gap to be made for our
passage.
Supports, and more waggons, and the constant rushing cars of officers.
The orchards were full of cavalry horses, many of them captured from
the Germans. The waiting soldiers grinned as I remarked on the fact
that some of them were wearing the boots of German prisoners, even
German regimental breeches. The Belgian mobilisation had to be carried
out in two days. Many of the troopers have had to complete their kit at
the German expense.
An officer swung into the car. He had come out of Liége to "rest." He
is one of the only two survivors of the party of seven who fought hand
to hand with and killed the seven or more Germans who rode into Liége
to assassinate General Léman. "We watched them riding up the street;
they were waving a white flag. My friend said, 'They have just killed a
sentry.' We fired--thus; and they fired; and their four officers fell;
and the others we killed; but only two of us were left."
As the sun set, long processions of Red Cross waggons, followed by
lines of trudging assistants, and some priests, blocked the roads.
The troops were moving back into cantonments. A Division was being sent
back to "rest." They swarmed over the fields and surged round the car
for news. Through the wire entanglements, and over the trenches and
bough-fortifications pressed a host of women. A number of wives and
mothers, who had come long distances for a last sight--some of them
had walked over twenty miles to find the right quarter--were thrust at
us enthusiastically from the roadside, and the car was filled so as to
save, if only a few of them, the twelve miles of tramp to a railway.
Many had carried heavy baskets of provisions; but the troops are so
well fed that they were not needed. Delicate, educated women, they
waved courageous farewell to their husbands, private soldiers with
serious sensitive faces, men of the learned professions, and poured
into my ears the stories of hardship that their men were undergoing.
As we passed, the towns seemed full of silent women waiting for news.
Small bodies of troops moved out now and again across the market
squares to repulse approaching Uhlans.
At one town we traversed, Louvain, the King was in council with the
staff. At Diest a huge crowd was acclaiming a joyful report about the
English, that sent us, too, on our way with very particular reason for
cheering.
In the last run in, through the dark, we were again made useful: this
time to convey a special mission to the War Office in Brussels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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