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74 pages

English

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Readers who appreciate top-notch chronicles of battlefield conflict won't be able to put Fighting in Flanders down. American journalist E. Alexander Powell had decades of front-line reporting experience before traveling to Belgium to get a closer look at the emerging conflict. He put his experience to good use reporting on the new military technologies that came into play during the early months of World War I.

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Military history

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 octobre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775454625
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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FIGHTING IN FLANDERS
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E. ALEXANDER POWELL

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Fighting In Flanders First published in 1914 ISBN 978-1-77545-462-5 © 2011 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Foreword I - The War Correspondents II - The City of Gloom III - The Death in the Air IV - Under the German Eagle V - With the Spiked Helmets VI - On the Belgian Battle-Line VII - The Coming of the British VIII - The Fall of Antwerp
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To My Friends The Belgians
"I have eaten your bread and salt; I have drunk your water and wine; The deaths you died I have sat beside And the lives that you led were mine."
RUDYARD KIPLING.
Foreword
*
Nothing is more unwise, on general principles, than to attempt towrite about a war before that war is finished and before history hasgiven it the justice of perspective. The campaign which began withthe flight of the Belgian Government from Brussels and whichculminated in the fall of Antwerp formed, however, a separate anddistinct phase of the Greatest of Wars, and I feel that I should writeof that campaign while its events are still sharp and clear in mymemory and before the impressions it produced have begun tofade. I hope that those in search of a detailed or technical accountof the campaign in Flanders will not read this book, because theyare certain to be disappointed. It contains nothing about strategy ortactics and few military lessons can be drawn from it. It is merely thestory, in simple words, of what I, a professional onlooker, who wasaccorded rather exceptional facilities for observation, saw inBelgium during that nation's hour of trial.
An American, I went to Belgium at the beginning of the war with an openmind. I had few, if any, prejudices. I knew the English, the French,the Belgians, the Germans equally well. I had friends in all fourcountries and many happy recollections of days I had spent in each.When I left Antwerp after the German occupation I was as pro-Belgianas though I had been born under the red-black-and-yellow banner. I hadseen a country, one of the loveliest and most peaceable in Europe,invaded by a ruthless and brutal soldiery; I had seen its towns andcities blackened by fire and broken by shell; I had seen its churchesand its historic monuments destroyed; I had seen its highways crowdedwith hunted, homeless fugitives; I had seen its fertile fields strewnwith the corpses of what had once been the manhood of the nation; Ihad seen its women left husbandless and its children left fatherless;I had seen what was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land ofdesolation; and I had seen its people—a people whom I, like the restof the world, had always thought of as pleasure-loving, inefficient,easy-going—I had seen this people, I say, aroused, resourceful,unafraid, and fighting, fighting, fighting. Do you wonder that theycaptured my imagination, that they won my admiration? I am pro-Belgian;I admit it frankly. I should be ashamed to be anything else.
E. Alexander Powell
London, November 1, 1914.
I - The War Correspondents
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War correspondents regard war very much as a doctor regardssickness. I don't suppose that a doctor is actually glad that peopleare sick, but so long as sickness exists in the world he feels that hemight as well get the benefit of it. It is the same with warcorrespondents. They do not wish anyone to be killed on theiraccount, but so long as men are going to be killed anyway, theywant to be on hand to witness the killing and, through thenewspapers, to tell the world about it. The moment that the warbroke out, therefore, a veritable army of British and Americancorrespondents descended upon the Continent. Some of them weremen of experience and discretion who had seen many wars andhad a right to wear on their jackets more campaign ribbons thanmost generals. These men took the war seriously. They were thereto get the news and, at no matter what expenditure of effort andmoney, to get that news to the end of a telegraph-wire so that thepeople in England and America might read it over their coffee-cupsthe next morning. These men had unlimited funds at their disposal;they had the united influence of thousands of newspapers and ofmillions of newspaper-readers solidly behind them; and they carriedin their pockets letters of introduction from editors and ex-presidentsand ambassadors and prime ministers.
Then there was an army corps of special writers, many of them withwell-known names, sent out by various newspapers and magazinesto write "mail stuff," as dispatches which are sent by mail instead oftelegraph are termed, and "human interest" stories. Theirqualifications for reporting the greatest war in history consisted, forthe most part, in having successfully "covered" labour troubles andmurder trials and coronations and presidential conventions, and, ina few cases, Central American revolutions. Most of the stories whichthey sent home were written in comfortable hotel rooms in Londonor Paris or Rotterdam or Ostend. One of these correspondents,however, was not content with a hotel window viewpoint. He wantedto see some German soldiers—preferably Uhlans. So he obtained aletter of introduction to some people living in the neighbourhood ofCourtrai, on the Franco-Belgian frontier. He made his way there withconsiderable difficulty and received a cordial welcome. The very firstnight that he was there a squadron of Uhlans galloped into the town,there was a slight skirmish, and they galloped out again. Thecorrespondent, who was a sound sleeper, did not wake up until itwas all over. Then he learned that the Uhlans had ridden under hisvery window.
Crossing on the same steamer with me from New York was a well-knownnovelist who in his spare time edits a Chicago newspaper. He wasprovided with a sheaf of introductions from exalted personagesand a bag containing a thousand pounds in gold coin. It was soheavy that he had brought a man along to help him carry it, andat night they took turns in sitting up and guarding it. He confidedto me that he had spent most of his life in trying to see wars, butthough on four occasions he had travelled many thousands of milesto countries where wars were in progress, each time he had arrivedjust after the last shot was fired. He assured me very earnestly thathe would go back to Michigan Boulevard quite contentedly if hecould see just one battle. I am glad to say that his perseverancewas finally rewarded and that he saw his battle. He never told mejust how much of the thousand pounds he took back to Chicagowith him, but from some remarks he let drop I gathered that he hadfound battle-hunting an expensive pastime.
One of the great London dailies was represented in Belgium by ayoung and slender and very beautiful English girl whose name, as anovelist and playwright, is known on both sides of the Atlantic. Imet her in the American Consulate at Ghent, where she was pleadingwith Vice-Consul Van Hee to assist her in getting through theGerman lines to Brussels. She had heard a rumour that Brusselswas shortly going to be burned or sacked or something of the sort,and she wanted to be on hand for the burning and sacking. She hadarrived in Belgium wearing a London tailor's idea of what constituteda suitable costume for a war correspondent—perhaps I should saywar correspondentess. Her luggage was a model of compactness: itconsisted of a sleeping-bag, a notebook, half a dozen pencils—anda powder-puff. She explained that she brought the sleeping-bagbecause she understood that war correspondents always slept inthe field. As most of the fields in that part of Flanders were justthen under several inches of water as a result of the autumn rains,a folding canoe would have been more useful. She was as insistenton being taken to see a battle as a child is on being taken to thepantomime. Eventually her pleadings got the better of my judgmentand I took her out in the car towards Alost to see, from a safedistance, what promised to be a small cavalry engagement. But theBelgian cavalry unexpectedly ran into a heavy force of Germans,and before we realized what was happening we were in a very warmcorner indeed. Bullets were kicking up little spurts of dust about us;bullets were tang-tanging through the trees and clipping off twigs,which fell down upon our heads; the rat-tat-tat of the Germanmusketry was answered by the angry snarl of the Belgian machine-guns;in a field near by the bodies of two recently killed cuirassierslay sprawled grotesquely. The Belgian troopers were stretched flatupon the ground, a veteran English correspondent was giving aremarkable imitation of the bark on a tree, and my driver, myphotographer and I were peering cautiously from behind the cornerof a brick farmhouse. I supposed that Miss War Correspondent wasthere too, but when I turned to speak to her she was gone. She wasstanding beside the car, which we had left in the middle of the roadbecause the bullets were flying too thickly to turn it around, dabbingat her nose with a powder-puff which she had left in the tonneauand then critically examining the effect in a pocket-mirror.
"For the love of God!" said I, running out and dragging her back toshelter, "don't you know that you'll be killed if you stay out here?"
"Will I?" said she, sweetly. "Well, you surely don't expect me to bekilled with my nose unpowdered, do you?"
That evening I asked her for her impressions of her first battle.
"Well," she answered, after a meditative pause, "it certainly