That afternoon, from the Ambulance Ocean, a young Belgian officer was buried.

It was a bright, sunny afternoon, but bitterly cold.  Troops were lined up before the hospital in the square; a band, too, holding its instruments with blue and ungloved fingers.

He had been a very brave officer, and very young.  The story of what he had done had been told about.  So, although military funerals are many, a handful of civilians had gathered to see him taken away to the crowded cemetery.  The three English gunboats were patrolling the sea.  Tall Belgian generals, in high blue-and-gold caps and great cape overcoats, met in the open space and conferred.

The dead young officer lay in state in the little chapel of the hospital.  Ten tall black standards round him held burning candles, the lights of faith.  His uniform, brushed of its mud and neatly folded, lay on top of the casket, with his pathetic cap and with the sword that would never lead another charge.  He had fought very hard to live, they said at the hospital.  But he had died.

The crowd opened, and the priest came through.  He wore a purple velvet robe, and behind him came his deacons and four small acolytes in surplices.  Up the steps went the little procession.  And the doors of the hospital closed behind it.

The civilians turned and went away.  The soldiers stood rigid in the cold sunshine, and waited.  A little boy kicked a football over the sand.  The guns at Nieuport crashed and hammered.

After a time the doors opened again.  The boy picked up his football and came closer.  The musicians blew on their fingers to warm them.  The dead young officer was carried out.  His sword gleamed in the sun.  They carried the casket carefully, not to disorder the carefully folded tunic or the pathetic cap.  The body was placed in an ambulance.  At a signal the band commenced to play and the soldiers closed in round the ambulance.

The path of glory, indeed!

But it was not this boyish officer’s hope of glory that had brought this scene to pass.  He died fighting a defensive war, to save what was left to him of the country he loved.  He had no dream of empire, no vision of commercial supremacy, no thrill of conquest as an invaded and destroyed country bent to the inevitable.  For months since Liege he had fought a losing fight, a fight that Belgium knew from the beginning must be a losing fight, until such time as her allies could come to her aid.  Like the others, he had nothing to gain by this war and everything to lose.

He had lost.  The ambulance moved away.