“The center of the fighting lies where the British and French pontoon corps are trying to keep the bridges they have succeeded in throwing across the river.

“Men who have come from the front line tell me that the combat there has been a positive slaughter.  They say that the unremitting and desperate firing of these four days and nights puts anything else in modern warfare into the shade, that river crossings are as great an objective on one side to take and keep as on the other to destroy.”

SEVEN DAYS OF HELL

A wounded soldier, on being brought back to the hospital at Paris, after only one week in the valley of the Aisne, said in a dazed sort of way: 

“Each day was like the others.  It began at 6 o’clock in the, morning with heavy shellfire.  There was a short interval at which it stopped, about 5:30 every day.  Then in the night came the charges, and one night I couldn’t count them.  It was awful—­kill, kill, kill, and still they came on, shoving one another over on to us.  Seven days and nights of it and some nights only an hour’s sleep; it was just absolute hell!”

None of the wounded found another word to describe the battle and the sight of the men bore it out.  Muddied to the eyes, wet, often with blood caked on them, many were suffering from the curious aphasia produced by continued trouble and the concussion of shells bursting.  Some were dazed and speechless, some deafened, and yet, strange to say, said a correspondent, no face wore the terrible animal war look.  They seemed to have been softened, instead of hardened, by their awful experience.

CHAPTER XIX

FALL OF ANTWERP

Great Seaport of Belgium Besieged by a Large German Force—­Forts Battered by Heavy Siege Guns—­Final Surrender of the City—­Belgian and British Defenders Escape—­Exodus of Inhabitants—­Germans Reach the Sea.

When the battle of the Marne ended in favor of the Allies and the Germans retired to take up a defensive position along the Aisne, the Belgian army renewed its activities against the invader.  With the fortified city of Antwerp as their base, the Belgians began (on September 10) an active campaign, having for its object the reoccupation of their cities and towns which had been taken and garrisoned by German troops.  In some cases they were successful in regaining possession of points which they had been forced to abandon during the German advance in August, and there were many hot encounters with the Germans who were left to hold open the German lines of communication through Belgium, But the forces of the Kaiser were too numerous and too mobile for successful opposition, and soon the Belgian army, despite the most gallant efforts, was compelled once more to retire behind the outer forts of Antwerp and there await the coming of an enemy who was approaching in force.