ACROSS THE BORDER INTO BELGIUM—LIFE ON ACTIVE SERVICE FROM DAY TO DAY—AFTER THE GERMANS HAD PASSED THROUGH—THE RETREAT

6th August to 5th September, 1914

It was on the 6th of August that we crossed the frontier into the Walloon district of Belgium at Muno, to bring succour to the Belgians whose territory had just been violated by the German Army.

In turning over my diary, I select this incident from among many others and stop to describe it, for it seems but right to recall the enthusiastic and touching welcome with which the whole people greeted us—a people now, alas, crushed under the German heel. We were welcomed with open arms—they gave without counting the cost, they threw open their doors to us and could not do enough for the French who had come to join forces with them and bring them succour.

There is not a trooper in my regiment, not a soldier in our whole army, who does not recall that day with feelings of profound emotion.

From the time we left Sedan, our ears still ringing with the cheers that had sent us on our way from Rheims, we received the heartiest of welcomes and good wishes at every village we passed through, but once across the frontier we were acclaimed—prematurely, as it turned out—as veritable conquerors.

Cavalry on the march, squadron after squadron, has a marked effect on people, and takes the semblance of an invincible rampart against which any enemy must go down.

After seventeen hours in the saddle, with helmet, lance, carbine, sword and full kit, now by a night-time more than disagreeable by reason of an icy cold fog, now under a tropical sun which scorched us, all the while in a cloud of dust, tormented by swarms of midges and horse-flies which hung about us, and tortured by the sight of cherry trees heavy with fruit, which hung over the road, but the branches of which were out of our reach, we approached the frontier.

On the road we passed all the vehicles in the district which had been requisitioned by the military, interminable convoys of them, amongst which, irrespective of class, were humble peasant carts, old-fashioned shaky barouches, motor-cars, with the crests of their owners blazoned on the doors, all filled with oats and forage.

AËroplanes followed us and passed ahead of us flying all-out towards the east. Every now and again we had to draw to the side of the road to allow streams of motor omnibuses drawn from the streets of Paris, filled with chasseurs[2] and infantry, to pass by; and our teeth crunched the fine dust that we incessantly breathed.

At length we passed by a fir wood, and a post, painted yellow and black, showed us that we were in Belgium; then we came in sight of a village, almost a hamlet, from which, as we drew near, there rose a noise, the sound of singing, growing louder as we drew near—the Marseillaise, sung in welcome by all the folk from the country-side, gathered at their country’s gateway to greet us.

All joined in, women, children with shrill voices, even the old men. They ran along after us till we reached the place, when the song ceased and a thousand voices cried: “Vive la France! Vive les FranÇais!” with such vigour that the horses were startled and cocked their ears in alarm.

One and all brought us gifts, each according to his or her means, fruit, bread, jam, cakes, cigars and cigarettes, pipes and tobacco. I should fill a page with a list of what was thrust upon us. To our parched lips women held flagons of wine or beer, which refreshed us more perhaps when it ran down our cheeks, caked with dust, even than when it found its way down our throats, as the jolting of our horses caused us to spill the precious liquid. It taxed us to stuff away all the dainties in our already overfull pockets, and we stuck cigars into our tunics between the buttons, and flowers in the buttonholes.

A number of French nuns with white head-dresses, like huge white birds, presented us with sacred medallions. I shall always retain graven on my memory the agony depicted in the beautiful, sad eyes of an elderly nun with white hair, who held out to me the last of her collection, a scapular of the Virgin in a brown wrap, and as she did so, said to me, “God guard you, my child.”

And in each village we passed through, that day and the days which followed, we met with the same welcome and the same generosity. It was the same at Basteigne, at Bertrix, at Rochefort, Beauraing, and Ave; indeed everywhere, in the towns as in the villages, the crowd hailed us and fed us. Belgians have handed me boxes of as many as fifty cigarettes.

After exhausting days of twelve or fourteen hours in the saddle I noticed that the troopers, worn out with fatigue, suffering from the heat, from hunger and thirst and intolerable stiffness, sat up in their saddles instinctively as we approached a village, prompted by an unconscious sense of pride in holding up their heads, and I can say, for my part, that such a welcome as we received always banished any feelings of fatigue.

One of our bitterest regrets was having to pass again through Belgium in the reverse direction and to read the dumb surprise on the faces of the people who had thought us unconquerable, but whose great hearts were full only of commiseration for us, worn out as we were, and who, forgetful of their own anxieties, did all in their power to help us.

A peasant woman, I remember, gave us the whole of her provisions, everything that remained in her humble dwelling. The enemy were then advancing on our heels in a threatening wave, and, on my expressing astonishment that she should strip her shelves bare in this fashion, she shook her fist towards the horizon in a fury of rage and exclaimed: “Ah, sir, I prefer that you should eat my provisions rather than leave them a crumb of bread.”

Up till the 19th August we had advanced in Belgium; the retreat of the division commenced that same day from Gembloux. We kept on seeking, without success, to get in touch with the German cavalry. Nothing but petty combats took place with insignificant details, a troop at most, but more often with patrols, reconnaissance parties and little groups who surrendered on our approach in a contemptible fashion.

I saw a German major, Prince R——, accompanied by two or three troopers, surrender themselves while still some two hundred mÈtres from one of our weak patrols. They threw down their arms and put up their hands. It was a sickening sight.

Everywhere the enemy’s cavalry gave ground, vanished in smoke, became a myth for our regiment, in spite of our forced marches. Each day we spent ten, fifteen, twenty hours in the saddle. One day we actually covered a hundred and thirty kilomÈtres in twenty-two hours, and reached our culminating point to the east, almost under the walls of LiÉge.

Although we hardly saw any Germans during this first month, we could, per contra, follow them by the traces of their crimes.

By day, from village to village, lamentations spread from one horizon to the other, and I regret not having noted the names of the places which were the scenes of the atrocities of which I saw the sequels. I regret not having taken the names of the unhappy women whose children, brothers and husbands had been tortured and shot without motive, not to speak of the outrages which they themselves had undergone, not to speak of the assaults of lechery and Sadism of which they had been the victims. They alluded to these in a fury of rage or made an involuntary confession in an agony of humiliation and grief.

By night a furrow of fire traced the enemy’s path. The Germans burnt everything that was susceptible of being burnt—ricks, barns, farms, entire villages, which blazed like torches, lighting the country-side with a weird light.

We entered villages of which nothing remained except smoking and calcined stones, before which families, who had lost their all, grieved and wrung their powerless hands at the sight of some black dÉbris which had once been all their joy, their hearth and home.

I wish particularly to insist that these deeds were not the result of accident, for we were daily witnesses of them for a whole month. I still shiver when I think of the confidences which I have received. The pen may not write down all the facts, all the abominations, all the hateful things, all the lowest and most degrading filthiness inspired by the imagination of crazy erotomaniacs. It was always Sadism which seemed to guide their acts and predominate amongst their misdeeds.

Here a mother mourned a child, shot for some childish prank; there a young girl grieved for her fiancÉ, hung because he was of military age; farther on a helpless old man had had his house pillaged and had been brutally treated because he had nothing else to offer. At every step we heard the story of crime, and those guilty deserve to be hung. Such are the things of which such an enemy was capable—an enemy who refused combat, who advanced hastily under cover of night to rob and burn a defenceless village, and who seemed to vanish like smoke at the approach of our troops, leaving in our hands hardly more than some drunken stragglers unable to regain their army, or some robbers who had waited behind to rob a house or to violate a woman, and had been taken in the act.

We passed through all that in our endless quest, always in the saddle, sleeping two or three hours at night, in an exasperating search for the German cavalry, which was constantly reported to be within gun-shot, but which disappeared by enchantment each time we approached. To give an idea of what we endured, I have transcribed word for word the notes from my field pocket-book describing some of these August days. These notes were written in most cases on horseback by the roadside during a halt.

And so it goes on each day till the end of the month. The 26th we marched in the direction of Cambrai; we put up at Epehy, which the enemy burnt the following day. The peasants replied by themselves setting fire to the crops to prevent their falling into the enemies’ hands.

At Roisel, a whole train of goods blazed in the midday heat. We went on to PÉronne. The 28th we were at Villers-Carbonel, where I was present at an unforgettable artillery combat. I saw shells throw some French skirmishers in the air by groups of three and four at a time. We left Villers-Carbonel in flames, and, from that moment, we beat a rapid retreat towards Paris, passing by Sourdon, Maisoncelle, Beauvais, Villers-sur-ThÈre, BreanÇon, Meulan, Les Alluets-le-Roi, and, after a last and painful stage, we put up at Loges-en-Josas, four kilomÈtres from Versailles, where the fortune of war brought me to one of our own estates.

Thus it came about that my mother, who believed me to be at the other end of Belgium, caught sight of me one fine morning coming up the central drive to the chÂteau on foot, leading my horse, my lance on my shoulder, followed by a long file of troopers.