13

Early each morning the ambulances started on their way to the zone of fire, where always one might go gleaning in the harvest fields of war.  The direction was given us, with the password of the day, by young de Broqueville, who received the latest reports from the Belgian headquarters staff.  As a rule there was not much choice.  It lay somewhere between the roads to Nieuport on the coast, and inland, to Pervyse, Dixmude, St. Georges, or Ramscapelle where the Belgian and German lines formed a crescent down to Ypres.

The centre of that half-circle girdled by the guns was an astounding and terrible panorama, traced in its outline by the black fumes of shell-fire above the stabbing flashes of the batteries.  Over Nieuport there was a canopy of smoke, intensely black, but broken every moment by blue glares of light as a shell burst and rent the blackness.  Villages were burning on many points of the crescent, some of them smouldering drowsily, others blazing fiercely like beacon fires.

Dixmude was still alight at either end, but the fires seemed to have burnt down at its centre.  Beyond, on the other horn of the crescent, were five flaming torches, which marked what were once the neat little villages of a happy Belgium.  It was in the centre of this battleground, and the roads about me had been churned up by shells and strewn with shrapnel bullets.  Close to me in a field, under the cover of a little wood, were some Belgian batteries.  They were firing with a machine-like regularity, and every minute came the heavy bark of the gun, followed by the swish of the shell, as it flew in a high arc and then smashed over the German lines.  It was curious to calculate the length of time between the flash and the explosion.  Further away some naval guns belonging to the French marines were getting the range of the enemy’s positions, and they gave a new note of music to this infernal orchestra.  It was a deep, sullen crash, with a tremendous menace in its tone.  The enemy’s shells were bursting incessantly, and at very close range, so that at times they seemed only a few yards away.  The Germans had many great howitzers, and the burst of the shell was followed by enormous clouds which hung heavily in the air for ten minutes or more.  It was these shells which dug great holes in the ground deep enough for a cart to be buried.  Their moral effect was awful, and one’s soul was a shuddering coward before them.

The roads were encumbered with long convoys of provisions for the troops, ambulances, Red Cross motor-cars, gun-wagons, and farm carts.  Two regiments of Belgian cavalry—­the chasseurs a cheval—­ were dismounted and bivouacked with their horses drawn up in single line along the roadway for half a mile or more.  The men were splendid fellows, hardened by the long campaign, and amazingly careless of shells.  They wore a variety of uniforms, for they were but the gathered remnants of the Belgian cavalry division which had fought from the beginning of the war.  I was surprised to see their horses in such good condition, in spite of a long ordeal which had so steadied their nerves that they paid not the slightest heed to the turmoil of the guns.