Fighting in Flanders | Page 9

trenches for
infantry. The region to the south of Antwerp is a network of canals, and
on the bank of every canal rose, as though by magic, parapets of
sandbags. Charges of dynamite were placed under every bridge and
viaduct and tunnel. Barricades of paving-stones and mattresses and
sometimes farm carts were built across the highways. At certain points
wires were stretched across the roads at the height of a man's head for
the purpose of preventing sudden dashes by armoured motor-cars. The
walls of such buildings as were left standing were loopholed for
musketry. Machine-guns and quick-firers were mounted everywhere.
At night the white beams of the searchlights swept this zone of
desolation and turned it into day. Now the pitiable thing about it was
that all this enormous destruction proved to have been wrought for
nothing, for the Germans, instead of throwing huge masses of infantry
against the forts, as it was anticipated that they would do, and thus
giving the entanglements and the mine-fields and the machine-guns a
chance to get in their work, methodically pounded the forts to pieces
with siege-guns stationed a dozen miles away. In fact, when the
Germans entered Antwerp not a strand of barbed wire had been cut, not
a barricade defended, not a mine exploded. This, mind you, was not
due to any lack of bravery on the part of the Belgians--Heaven knows,
they did not lack for that !--but to the fact that the Germans never gave
them a chance to make use of these elaborate and ingenious devices. It
was like a man letting a child painstakingly construct an edifice of
building-blocks and then, when it was completed, suddenly sweeping it

aside with his hand.
As a result of these elaborate precautions, it was as difficult to go in or
out of Antwerp as it is popularly supposed to be for a millionaire to
enter the kingdom of Heaven. Sentries were as thick as policemen in
Piccadilly. You could not proceed a quarter of a mile along any road, in
any direction, without being halted by a harsh "Qui vive?" and having
the business end of a rifle turned in your direction. If your papers were
not in order you were promptly turned back--or arrested as a suspicious
character and taken before an officer for examination--though if you
were sufficiently in the confidence of the military authorities to be
given the password, you were usually permitted to pass without further
question. It was some time before I lost the thrill of novelty and
excitement produced by this halt-who-
goes-there-advance-friend-and-give-the-countersign business. It was so
exactly the sort of thing that, as a boy, I used to read about in books by
George A. Henty that it seemed improbable and unreal. When we were
motoring at night and a peremptory challenge would come from out the
darkness and the lamps of the car would pick out the cloaked figure of
the sentry as the spotlight picks out the figure of an actor on the stage,
and I would lean forward and whisper the magic mot d'ordre, I always
had the feeling that I was taking part in a play-which was not so very
far from the truth, for, though I did not appreciate it at the time, we
were all actors, more or less important, in the greatest drama ever
staged.
In the immediate vicinity of Antwerp the sentries were soldiers of the
regular army and understood a sentry's duties, but in the outlying
districts, particularly between Ostend and Ghent, the roads were
patrolled by members of the Garde civique, all of whom seemed
imbued with the idea that the safety of the nation depended upon their
vigilance, which was a very commendable and proper attitude indeed.
When I was challenged by a Garde civique I was always a little nervous,
and wasted no time whatever in jamming on the brakes, because the
poor fellows were nearly always excited and handled their rifles in a
fashion which was far from being reassuring. More than once, while
travelling in the outlying districts, we were challenged by civil guards

who evidently had not been entrusted with the password, but who,
when it was whispered to them, would nod their heads importantly and
tell us to pass on.
"The next sentry that we meet," I said to Roos on one of these
occasions, "probably has no idea of the password. I'll bet you a box of
cigars that I can give him any word that comes into my head and that
he won't know the difference."
As we rolled over the ancient drawbridge which gives admittance to
sleepy Bruges, a bespectacled sentry, who looked as though he had
suddenly been called from an accountant's desk to perform the duties of
a soldier, held up his hand,