Chapter V: Louvain and Waterloo

The encounter with the French regiments was reassuring for the time; but as I returned north of Wavre, it became again doubtful whether the link had really been made. News of the steady flood of Germans pouring by Diest upon Louvain met me near Brussels. To get an idea of the relative pace of the German advance I determined to return that night towards the Belgian left wing and discover for myself, if possible, the chances of its holding out.

A few hours at Brussels about noon were enough to convince me that it would be well now to keep outside and moving independently. The atmosphere of calm which the admirable organisation of the town had preserved so long, even in face of the near approach of the German cavalry on the south-east, was beginning to break down. The mistaken policy of silence was having its inevitable effect. For want of news, rumour was spreading. The Germans were said to be twenty miles, fifteen miles, ten miles away. Treat people as children, which has been the policy of the authorities in this war, and you will force them in the end to behave as children. If ever a population deserved to be taken into confidence it was that of Brussels. But it was now being treated with less and less trust every day. Papers were being suppressed; official communications grew less frequent and more obviously doctored. Our own authorities contributed by a curt request that all British correspondents should be ejected. How undeserved this was I was able, as not of the profession, to appreciate. In view of what was common knowledge, as to plans, positions and news, among scores of British correspondents in Brussels, their tact and loyalty were deserving of high praise and increased rather than diminished confidence.

I moved my base, therefore, to Waterloo, to a friendly little hostelry that had already proved useful on our long skirmishing runs. In the late afternoon another excursion to the south-east left little doubt that the main German advance was progressing on this northern line. Reports of German cavalry met us in the villages. But what was happening to the Allied armies? On the return I met, and followed for some distance through the lanes, a regiment of French infantry, who were making a forced march to join the Belgians. It hardly seemed possible, therefore, that the evacuation rumours which I had heard in Brussels could be true.

To help towards a solution I started again, this Wednesday evening, towards Louvain, and ran through the town at dusk.

I had come to know Louvain very well, in the days of my interviews with the Headquarter Staff. There was a little restaurant at the corner of the odd-shaped "Place," facing the magnificent Hotel de Ville, where I could watch the constant stream of cars and columns passing in and out of the cordon that surrounded the church, which contained the Commander-in-Chief, and sometimes even the King. Occasionally a British Staff officer would cheer me with the sight of the well-known uniform. There were always Belgian army surgeons, in the brown cap, ready for a gossip, restless horses with unhandy recruit riders, for amusement, and walks through the deserted picturesque streets, for a change to the eye. In a week or so I got to know it well, its quaint atmosphere of a mediæval university town charged with the restless electricity of military occupation, the uneasy mystery of an uncertain fate. And in another week or so--it was not.

I passed through it, or rather round it that evening for the last time; past the lines of soldiers sleeping under the station shelters, and the sentries with their handkerchief puggrees. I saw it only once again, the next night, by the glare of a few burning houses on the outskirts, beacons of the Belgian retreat and the German occupation.

Wednesday.

Beyond Louvain progress in the dark was very difficult. I failed to get the news I sought, but I heard something of the enemy. I made my way during the night down behind the Belgian lines at Geet Betz, with a returning officer as guide.

Here the advanced German right wing, chiefly cavalry--Uhlans and dragoons--has been trying to turn the Belgian left.

They have been repulsed once to-day in the attempt to cross the river, and suffered enormously owing to their advance in column formation.

The Belgians, too, have suffered considerably from the mitrailleuse, but have held their entrenchment with remarkable courage.

The Germans returned to the attack, and were expected to renew the assault to-night.

It was too dark to see or be seen in the undulating fields, but voices from the trenches and the movements of horses, and the occasional rush of a military motor, acted as signs.

Taking the chance of something happening within hearing, I made myself comfortable under some bushes near an open track leading through the lines of entanglements--so far as they could be located. There was an occasional sound of distant firing, outposts skirmishing; later in the night a single whistle and the sound of wheels grinding on tracks. What may have been a battery moved up on to a rise in the ground--seen as a shadow--about a quarter of a mile to the south. Here they seemed to stop, for there was silence again.

Another long wait, and then the sound of cantering horses--some four or five--coming by the track from behind, inside the lines. Were they friends?

They had passed me, and were in a line with the slight hill to the south, when little sparks of flame--half a dozen or so--glinted for a second out of the shadows.

There was the slight "phit" of bullets through the leaves, and then the purr of a maxim. The canter broke into a sharp gallop down the track, following upon a single shouted order.

Some heavier piece of ordnance coughed a short distance to the left. A reply came from far in front. A rattle, or rather an uneasy stir and crackle, like a wet bonfire, moved along the lines, and died away in the dark to the south.

The sound of the horses' feet stopped--probably they had turned on to softer field-mould. And then silence again.

But this time the sense of human presence stayed with me. The darkness seemed strained and alive with tense expectancy.

The nights are short, and their cover shorter.

I had to be content with only the sound-picture of the night skirmish.

During the darkest hours before dawn we got back to Waterloo. On the southern edge of the battlefield itself I lay in the open, waiting for daylight, and listening for the sound of cannon commencing that should declare whether the Allies had really advanced, and were occupying some position that might still save Brussels and Belgium.

Waterloo, Thursday Morning.

A Shakespearean interlude this in the great Tragedy. Pistol, and Bardolph--what you will: the old story of the talkative coward!

I have come up here, for the first hours of quiet in three weeks; to escape from the constant excitement of wondering whether the next pair of galloping lancers approaching across the fields are friend or enemy; to avoid the agitated nerves of towns, where nine-tenths are spending their time in trying to discover whether there is any truth or personal bearing in what the last tenth lets them grudgingly know.

With all consideration for the necessity of secrecy, the thing is being overdone. No one can be got to believe that there is really no war going on; and for want of proper information imagination is beginning to run riot and nerves to snap.

A little company of peasants, fine, independent, sturdy folk, now safe behind the great lines of armies. A jolly company, full of joke and laughter, but with an eye all the time on the distant hill of the great battlefield.

And one stout, serious leader of the local Civil Guard, who spends each night beside the lion on the mound. Not alone; for three blue-bloused peasants with muskets wait at the other corners: a curious recall of the Great Duke's statue at Hyde Park Corner!

The last time I was here the three, aided by four girls, with their hair still down, from the farm, plotted against the braggart's peace. He dare not climb the 100-foot mound alone in the dark. But he wanted straw, for a warmer seat.

In his short absence the three others were hidden in a barn by the girls. The door shut. In the dark, alone, the leader set out to climb the mound, thinking they had gone on.

He talked loudly to himself. Then he began to call their names, "Pierre! Jean! Georges!--GEORGES!" He reached the top to find himself alone with the lion and the stars.

A wild yell: the two barrels discharged in panic: a head over heels descent: and a huge roar of laughter from the men and girls who had crept out into the road, prolonged till it became the hysteria of overtried nerves.

Then, the growl of cannon in the far distance, and all suddenly were silent.

Unwilling to precipitate, by my night attack, the arrangements of the peasants for escaping by their windows if the wandering Uhlans arrive, I have come down the battlefield to sleep, in a coat, under the stars.

The night is extraordinarily still. Twice the cannon have droned for a short time far off. A nearer shot, that roused a momentary shouting and movement in the sleeping village behind me, must have come from some nervous or sleepy Civil Guard.

Earlier in the night there were lights winking far away, towards Genappe; probably French contingents signalling.

And the meteors have been falling, criss and cross, in the summer warm darkness, over the darker cloud above the waiting armies to the east.

1815; and what were the men then thinking who lay rolled up in their cloaks to sleep their last night on the fields about me?

Ninety-nine years; and what are the still greater hosts of young and old men thinking, as they lie in their coats watching those same stars, only a few miles away from me, just behind that darker band of trees?

A century! And the only difference, that the one great army, that then faced up these slopes against us, now lies protecting us; in its turn ringing off a hostile army that then slept and stood with us as friends.

A century of progress! And what to show for it? The armies of four nations slightly shifted in their relation to these great plains, like spokes on a turning wheel.

Firing has recommenced, very faintly, in the distance. Not more disturbing than the harsh cry of a night-jar in the wood beside me.

For these few hours the terrible, unreal atmosphere of war, when every inch of earth threatens a surprise, and no moment seems real till it is past, has been absent. Night, and the stars, and quiet, have seemed like old friends, renewing a quiet of thought, restoring proportions.

I have been writing by the light of matches, under a coat.

Now the stir of wind before the dawn has passed. A few dogs are barking. And a shout or two tells of the Civil Guard changing their watchmen.

I can see to write in the grey dawn. Beyond my feet, out there on the hills, brain and sinew are again alert, and plotting cunningly to kill.

How much of hope and life and promise may have ended in darkness before the next night covers this sudden glow of sun?

The uncertain outlines of the Waterloo monuments, commemorating heroic deeds of the past, in the grey half light have a sinister look. How soon will the sordid squalor of these new fights be in its turn converted into such memorials, to entrap new generations into dreaming that there is glory in war?