On the morning of October 8 two troop trains passed each other in the station of Thourout. One contained Belgian Carabiniers; the other, French Marines. They exchanged greetings from their respective lines. The Carabiniers waved their little yellow-bound caps and cried: "Long live France!" The sailors replied by hurrahs in honour of Belgium.

"Where are you going?" asked a Belgian officer.

"To Antwerp. And you?"

"To France."

He explained that the Carabiniers were recruits from La Campine, who were being sent to our lines to finish their training.

"You'll soon get them into shape, won't you?" said a sailor to the officer. And shaking his fist at the horizon, he added:

"Don't you worry, Lieutenant! We shall get at the scum some day, never fear."

The Belgian officer who describes the scene, M. Edouard de Kayser,[3] had left Antwerp during the night. He did not know that the defence was at its last gasp, and that the evacuation had begun. Our sailors were no better informed. Rear-Admiral Ronarc'h, who was in command, thought that he was taking his brigade to Dunkirk; he had been given a week to form it and organise it on the footing of two regiments (six battalions and a machine-gun company). Everything had to be evolved: the complement of officers, the men, the auxiliary services. This arduous task was complicated by the lack of cohesion among the elements of the brigade and perpetual changes of quarters (Creil, Stains, Pierrefitte, etc.). But the idea of forming infantry brigades with sailors was an after-thought. Article 11 of the Law of August 8, 1913, certainly permitted any surplus men in the navy to be used for service in the field, but the manner in which these contingents were to be employed had never been clearly defined. Would they be linked to existing bodies, or would they be formed into separate units? The latter alternative, by far the most reasonable, which effected a gradual transition, and, while connecting the naval combatant with the land forces, preserved his somewhat jealous but very stimulating esprit de corps, was by no means unanimously approved. The Minister overruled objections, and he was well advised. The glorious lessons of 1870, of Le Bourget and Le Mans, had taught him what to expect from the co-operation of navy and army. Some preparation was of course necessary. Strictly speaking, a navy is made to navigate, and this explains a certain neglect of drill; these men in new clothes, "capelÉs" (cloaked), as they say, in the new fashion, their caps bereft of pompons,[4] their collarless tunics buttoned up to the throat, had be transformed into soldiers. Handy as sailors proverbially are, a certain stiffness of movement in the early days betrayed the inexperience of these sea-birds, whose wings had been clipped; they were further hampered by heavy infantry overcoats. The brigade was sent almost immediately to the entrenched camp of Paris.[5] Scarcely had it settled into its quarters when its commander received orders to be ready to start for Dunkirk, where a new army was being formed. Dunkirk was not yet threatened; the brigade would be able to complete its organisation there. The order was dated October 4. On the morning of the 7th the brigade entrained at Saint Denis and at Villetaneuse with its convoys.

"We are comfortably installed in cattle-trucks," notes Fusilier R. in his pocket-book. "At Creil we see houses that were burnt by the Germans. Night comes; we try to sleep, but in vain. It is very cold. We shiver in our trucks." But over the dunes, along which the train had been running since it left Boulogne, a patch of purple light appeared; then other fires twinkled, green and red, and the keen breath of the open sea made itself felt—Dunkirk. Here a surprise awaited the brigade: a change in the orders; it was not to turn out, but the trains were to go on "towards Belgium, towards the enemy," to Antwerp, in short.

The men stamped with joy. They hung over the doors of the trucks, waving their caps in greeting to Belgian territory.[6] The Admiral went off in the first train with his staff. On the afternoon of the 8th he found General Pau on the platform at Ghent. The great organiser of the connections between the Allied Armies had just left Antwerp, where he had been to plan out the retreat of the Belgian army with King Albert. He informed the Admiral that the railway had been cut above the town, and that the six divisions which were defending Antwerp had begun to fall back upon Bruges; two divisions were echeloned to the west of the Terneusen Canal, and three to the east. Only one division was still in Antwerp, with 10,000 English troops.[7] The Belgian cavalry was covering the retreat on the Scheldt, to the south of Lokeren. There was no longer any question of entering Antwerp; the contingent was to co-operate in the retreating movement with the English reinforcements which were expected, and with the troops of the garrison at Ghent; everything seemed to indicate that the enemy would try to gain ground in the west, and to invest the Belgian army, exhausted by two months of incessant fighting, and the forces from Antwerp that were supporting it at intervals along the Dutch frontier. But, to ensure the success of this enveloping manoeuvre, the Germans would first be obliged to take Ghent and Bruges, which they might so easily have done a month earlier; they had deliberately neglected this precaution, feeling confident that they would be able to occupy them at their own time without firing a shot.

By the end of August, indeed, General von Boehn's Army Corps had advanced to Melle, within a few miles of Ghent. Although no resistance had been offered, Melle had been partially burnt and pillaged; the Germans had spared only the distillery where their troops were quartered, which belonged to a naturalised Bavarian. To save the town from effective occupation by the enemy, the Burgomaster, M. Braun, had agreed with General von Boehn to undertake the victualling of the German troops stationed at Beleghem. The requisition was not a very harsh one for war time. But the foes were to meet again; on August 25, the morrow of Charleroi, the Kaiser would have cashiered a general as duly convicted of imbecility who had ventured to suggest that in October France, supposing her to be still alive, would have had strength enough in her death-throes to detach units and send them to the help of Belgium. Be this as it may, it is certain that the Belgian army owed its salvation to this erroneous calculation, or foolish presumption.

The effort the enemy had scorned to make in August against Ghent and West Flanders was now determined upon in October, after the fall of Antwerp. The conditions seemed to have changed but little. Ghent, an open town, spread over an alluvial plain at the confluence of the Scheldt and the Lys, which branch off here into innumerable canals, is open on every side to sudden assault. It has neither forts nor ramparts. We could only rely upon improvised defences to check the advance of the enemy. The garrison, under the command of General Clothen, was reduced to eight squadrons of cavalry, a mixed brigade, a volunteer brigade, and two line regiments, none of them up to full strength. However, with our 6,000 rifles, they would suffice to deploy in the loop of the Scheldt, and on the space between the Scheldt and the Lys to the south of the town, which seemed to be specially threatened. If the English 7th Division arrived in time on the following day, it would reinforce the front, which it would be unnecessary to extend further for the purposes of a purely temporary defence, designed to give the army in Antwerp an additional day or two. The fighting would probably be very severe; neither General Pau, who was responsible for the plan, nor Admiral Ronarc'h, who was to direct the principal effort, had any illusions on this score.

"Salute these gentlemen," said the General to his Staff, pointing to the naval officers; "you will not see them again."[8]

The rest of the brigade followed hard upon the Admiral. The last trains arrived at Ghent during the night. The whole population was astir, cheering the sailors as they marched through the town to their respective barracks: the LÉopold Barracks, the Circus, and the ThÉÂtre Flamand. The officers and the Admiral were lodged at the HÔtel des Postes.[9] The reveillÉ was sounded at 4.30 a.m. The men drank their coffee and set off for Melle, where the Belgians had prepared trenches for them.