At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium

Again and again came the familiar yell, followed by the inevitable crash. A dozen or so men were lying about him, shattered, dead, or dying.

But the pom-pom continued to deal death, slackening only now and then when a fresh belt was adjusted.

Adding to the roar of heavy guns, and quite close to them, lay the hidden fort of Pontisse, while forts Barchon, Evegnèe, and Fleron, on the heists across the river, were thundering and dealing death in the enemy’s ranks. Behind them, to the left, lay three other forts – Liers, Lanlin, and Loncin – defending the city of Liège, and forming a further portion of the ring.

Time after time their huge guns roared, and the very earth quaked. Time after time the enemy across the river were decimated by the terrible fire.

Then, every now and then, the ear was deafened by the loud crackling of musketry, which sounded like the loading of granite blocks into a cart. They were of two pitches, the deeper from the rifles of the infantry, and the sharper from the cavalry carbines. And above it all – above the constant explosions of shrapnel – sounded the regular pom-pom-pom-pom, steady as the tick of a rapid clockwork motor – adding to the deadly fire now sweeping the valley for nearly twenty miles.

Edmond, quite cool and determined, lay there firing away in the direction of the little puffs of grey smoke, which were hardly distinguishable behind the distant railway line. It was his first experience of being under fire, and after the first few minutes he grew quite unconcerned, even though he saw that many of his comrades had, alas! been bowled over. The primeval fury of the male beast bent on fighting, which seizes every man who is called upon to defend his life, had also seized him.

“They say that the French will be at Liège to-night,” remarked the onder-officier with the red moustache, in charge of the machine-gun. “If they are, we will teach those German brutes a lesson. We will – ”

Next instant he reeled and fell forward upon his face. A bullet entering his jaw had passed through his head, carrying with it a large piece of his skull. Death had been instantaneous. With hope of victory upon his lips the brave fellow had passed, in a single second, into that land which lies beyond the human ken.

The four Chasseurs serving the gun stopped and turned him over, but saw at once that he no longer lived.

A few seconds later Edmond heard sharp words of command from his lieutenant, who had crawled along to him, and in obedience he ceased firing his Mauser, took the dead man’s place and assumed charge of the machine-gun, which, within another half-minute, was continuing its work, while the body of the onder-officier was dragged aside.

“Curse the grey devils! They shall pay for that!” cried one of the men fiercely.

Just then, however, there came a lull in the firing. The shells had ceased, and the enemy was slackening in his attack all along the line.

Was the fight subsiding?

A dull, distant roar was heard from Boncelles, where the steel cupolas were rising, and the big guns hurling death at the grey hordes of the Kaiser, and then disappearing. Then silence.

Suddenly another loud crackling of rifles, and again Edmond’s pom-pom recommenced its rapid rhythmic rattle.

More Mausers crackling, the shrill yell of a shell passing over them, and then a blood-red explosion some distance behind them.

Another shouted word of command, and the whole line of rifles were again discharged. It seemed almost as a signal for the fight to recommence, for next moment the attack was renewed with redoubled vigour.

The short, sharp reports of the enemy’s artillery reverberated along the valley, and shells were now exploding unpleasantly near the trenches.

“I thought they had had enough,” growled one of the men to Edmond, in French, “but it seems they haven’t. Bien, we will show the Kaiser and his brigands that we mean defiance. See, over there, m’sieur! They are burning Visé, and Argenteau too! I lived in Visé when a boy. My sister is there now – unless she has escaped into Holland. I pray to God the poor girl has done so.”

“I sincerely hope she has,” Edmond declared. “It surely is no place for a woman down yonder.”

“Ah, mon vieux, they’ve been killing women and children, the savages,” growled another man with set teeth, as he took out a fresh belt of cartridges. “I heard so as we came along from Liège. But I can’t believe it to be true. The Germans are surely not savages, but a cultured race.”

“Culture?” snapped the first man, a somewhat rough, uncouth fellow, plainly of the peasant class. “If they were cultured, as it is said, they would not burn those undefended villages yonder, and massacre the inhabitants as they are doing. It is horrible – awful!”

“Ah, but the massacres are only hearsay,” Edmond remarked.

“No. One man, an eye-witness, has escaped from Visé. He swam the river, told the terrible truth, and the report was telephoned this morning to Brussels. I overheard our captain tell the major as we were on the march here. The Germans have shot down dozens of men and women, and even little children. Some of them have been deliberately burned alive in their homes. That, m’sieur, is the way Germany makes war! But surely that is not war – it is savage butchery, m’sieur. Culture, bah!”

And the man bent again to his gun.

Could those brave Belgians have seen what was, at that moment, happening in those unoffending villages about them, they would surely have left their trenches and, even regardless of the pitiless fire of the enemy, dashed to the rescue of the poor unoffending inhabitants. On that warm, bright sunlit August day, whole villages were being put to the sword by the ruthless soldiery of the Kaiser, upon the flimsy pretext that the villagers, being non-combatants, had fired upon the troops. Yet the truth came out that such massacres of the inhabitants were actually part of the general plan of campaign. The Kaiser had ordered those cold-blooded atrocities for purely strategical considerations. They were not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of marauding and buccaneering soldiers, but were ordered by Imperial command.

Over there, among those green hillsides sloping to the river, the Teutonic wave had burst its bounds. Fiendish tortures were being inflicted on helpless old men, women, and children. Peaceful villagers were hanged to trees, sometimes stark naked, and their bodies riddled by bullets. Innocent children were savagely sabred by German officers who, only a week before, were strutting in civilised drawing-rooms, the scented and elegant darlings of the ladies of Berlin.

At that hour, while Edmond Valentin crouched beside his newly acquired pom-pom, pouring a deadly fire away across the river, there were being enacted scenes of outrage, plunder, and massacre too terrible even to bear description – scenes in which blood-guilty ruffians of the great War Lord of Germany performed their grim and terrible work, a work so dastardly and inhuman as to have no parallel; atrocious acts actually ordered by the officers themselves, and which would for ever be handed down in history as an indelible blot upon the escutcheon of those blasphemous and barbarous brigands who loved to call their country the Fatherland.

That strip of green, smiling, undulating country between the German frontier and the Meuse, dotted by small prosperous villages, many of them filled by factory-hands and work-people, was that day swept by the fierce fiery hurricane of war, and so suddenly had it all come upon them that most of the people had not had time to realise what war meant ere they found the swaggering Uhlans clattering up the streets, shouting at and insulting the inhabitants, shooting down men, women, and children, and laughing heartily at the panic which their appearance caused.

From where Edmond Valentin was posted he could only see the columns of black smoke as it rose steadily from the farms and villages now burning in all directions. He, like nearly everyone else, disbelieved the stories of murder and mutilation, for they were really in credible. Surely the Kaiser would never treat little Belgium in such a manner after his Empire solemnly guaranteeing its neutrality!

If so, of what use were treaties? Why should anybody’s signature be honoured further, either in business or in social life?

Bang! There was a blood-red flash, the air was filled with blue-grey smoke and a poisonous odour which made one’s eyes smart. For a second, Edmond was staggered by the terrible force of the concussion, for he had been dealt a blow from behind which sent him reeling forward heavily. The air was filled with flying fragments, and he held his breath. It was as though an earthquake had occurred.

Then, when the smoke cleared, he saw a dozen of his comrades lying shattered about him, including two of the men at his gun. Not far away the scorched grass had been torn up, and a great hole showed in the brown earth.

He set his teeth, and bent over the two fallen men. One had been wounded in the stomach by a fragment of the shell, and was writhing on the ground in his death agony, uttering fearful curses upon the enemy and the Kaiser in particular; while the other, after a final convulsive shudder which shook his whole frame and told its own tale to anybody who had been under fire in battle, turned slowly over and then lay quite still.

The shell alas! had only been too truly placed, for not only were a dozen brave fellows lying shattered, but a splinter had also struck the breech of Edmond’s gun, and it had jammed in consequence.

When serving before with the Chasseurs he had been in charge of a machine-gun, and hence was thoroughly familiar with its mechanism. Therefore, quite calmly, as though no fight were in progress, he quickly unscrewed the parts, discovered that a pin was bent and knocked it straight, and within five minutes the pom-pom was again pouring forth, its rain of lead sweeping to and fro across the railway line opposite.

Suddenly, with a roar and flash, another earthquake occurred. The air instantly became filled with black acrid smoke and flying fragments of shell from one of the enemy’s howitzers beyond the hills, and at that moment the trench became a perfect inferno, for deadly shells were falling upon it, and dozens of Edmond’s comrades were being maimed or killed on every hand.

As the smoke cleared slightly he bent again to sight the gun, when his eye caught the bridge below, whereon the dastardly enemy had placed that vanload of brave Belgians as a parti-coloured screen.

Just as he looked, he saw a shell, fired deliberately by a German gunner, strike the van, explode, and next second there remained only a heap of wreckage, among which the twenty poor fellows who had been imprisoned in it were lying heaped, dead and dying, some of them shattered out of all recognition.

“The murderers!” cried Edmond, while his men, who also noticed what had happened, loudly cursed the ruthless barbarians with whom they now found themselves confronted.

Bang! The explosion was deafening. Edmond again felt the concussion where he was crouching. It knocked his shako aside, and for a second he believed he had been hit. Yet, by a miracle, he was unharmed.

Next second an order was shouted – the order to retire!

The Germans, now using their artillery and shelling the Belgian trenches, were advancing. They were crossing the bridge below, and a pontoon section had already begun its work under fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Shells were falling thickly now. Their defence had, alas! been all in vain. Edmond heard the order shouted in Flemish.

“Vlucht! Vlucht!” shouted the lieutenant. Edmond stood for a second like a man in a dream. The earth everywhere was being whipped by bullets.

Then he directed his men to dismantle the gun and, two others helping, each quickly shouldering a piece, the little party made off with the Chasseurs over the crest of the hill and down the other side, leaving behind them, alas! many hundreds of their poor comrades.

Bang! Yet another shell fell, rending a great hole in the trench at the very spot where, only a few moments before, Edmond Valentin’s gun had been standing.

Chapter Seven.

In the Eagle’s Claws