The Little Belgian Who Said, "You Betcha"

In the fighting around Termonde the bridge over the Scheldt had been three times blown up and three times reconstructed. Wires now led to explosives under the bridge on the Termonde side, and on the side held by the Belgians they led to a table in the room of the commanding officer. In this table was an electric button. By the button stood an officer. The entrance of the Germans on that bridge was the signal for the officer to push that button, and thus to blow both bridge and Germans into bits.

But the Belgians were taking no chances. If by any mishap that electric connection should fail them, it would devolve upon the artillery lined upon the bank to rake the bridge with shrapnel. A roofed-over trench ran along the river like a levee and bristled with machine guns whose muzzles were also trained upon the bridge. Full caissons of ammunition were standing alongside, ready to feed the guns their death-dealing provender, and in the rear, all harnessed, were the horses, ready to bring up more caissons.

Though in the full blaze of day, the gunners were standing or crouching by their guns. The watchers of the night lay stretched out upon the ground, sleeping in the warm sun after their long, anxious vigil. Stumbling in among them, I was pulled back by one of the photographers.

"For heaven's sake," he cried, "don't wake up those men!"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because this picture I'm taking here is to be labeled 'Dead Men in the Termonde Trenches,' and you would have them starting up as though the day of resurrection had arrived."

After taking these pictures we were ready to cross the bridge; but the two sentries posted at this end were not ready to let us. They were very small men, but very determined, and informed us that their instructions were to allow no one to pass over without a permit signed by the General. We produced scores of passes and passports decorated with stamps and seals and covered with myriad signatures. They looked these over and said that our papers were very nice and undoubtedly very numerous, but ungraciously insisted on that pass signed by the General.

So back we flew to the General at Grembergen. I waited outside until my companions emerged from the office waving passes. They were in a gleeful, bantering mood. That evening they apprised me of the fact that all day I had been traveling as a rich American with my private photographers securing pictures for the Belgian Relief Fund.

Leaving our automobile in charge of the chauffeur, we cautiously made our way over the bridge into the city of Termonde, or what was once Termonde, for it is difficult to dignify with the name of city a heap of battered buildings and crumbling brick—an ugly scar upon the landscape.

I was glad to enter the ruins with my companions instead of alone. It was not so much fear of stray bullets from a lurking enemy as the suggestion of the spirits of the slain lingering round these tombs. For Termonde appeared like one vast tomb. As we first entered its sepulchral silences we were greatly relieved that the three specter-like beings who sat huddled up over a distant ruin turned out not to be ghosts, but natives hopelessly and pathetically surveying this wreck that was once called home, trying to rake out of the embers some sort of relic of the past.

A regiment of hungry dogs came prowling up the street, and, remembering the antics of the past week, they looked at us as if speculating what new species of crazy human being we were. To them the world of men must suddenly have gone quite insane, and if there had been an agitator among them he might well have asked his fellow-dogs why they had acknowledged a race of madmen as their masters. Indeed, one could almost detect a sense of surprise that we didn't use the photographic apparatus to commit some new outrage. They stayed with us for a while, but at the sight of our cinema man turning the crank like a machine gun, they turned and ran wildly down the street.

Emptied bottles looted from winecellars were strung along the curbs. To some Germans they had been more fatal than the Belgian bullets, for while one detachment of the German soldiers had been setting the city blazing with petrol from the petrol flasks, others had set their insides on fire with liquors from the wine flasks, and, rolling through the town in drunken orgy, they had fallen headlong into the canal.

There is a relevant item for those who seek further confirmation as to the reality of the atrocities in Belgium. If men could get so drunken and uncontrolled as to commit atrocities on themselves (i.e., self-destruction), it is reasonable to infer that they could commit atrocities on others—and they undoubtedly did. The surprise lies not in the number of such crimes, but the fewness of them.

Three boys who had somehow managed to crawl across the bridge were prodding about in the canals with bamboo poles.

"What are you doing?" we inquired.

"Fishing," they responded.

"What for?" we asked.

"Dead Germans," they replied.

"What do you do with them—bury them?"

"No!" they shouted derisively. "We just strip them of what they've got and shove 'em back in."

Their search for these hapless victims was not motivated by any sentimental reasons, but simply by their business interest as local dealers in helmets, buttons and other German mementos.

We took pictures of these young water-ghouls; a picture of the Hotel de Ville, the calcined walls standing like a shell, the inside a smoking mass of debris; then a picture of a Belgian mitrailleuse car, manned by a crowd of young and jaunty dare-devils. It came swinging into the square, bringing a lot of bicycles from a German patrol which had just been mowed down outside the city. After taking a shot at an aeroplane buzzing away at a tremendous distance overhead, they were off again on another scouting trip.

I got separated from my party and was making my way alone when a sharp "Hello!" ringing up the street, startled me. I turned to see, not one of the photographers, but a fully-armed, though somewhat diminutive, soldier in Belgian uniform waving his hand at me.

"Hello!" he shouted; "are you an American?"

I could hardly believe my eyes or my ears, but managed to shout back, "Yes, yes, I'm an American. Are you?" I asked dubiously.

"You betcha I'm a 'Merican," he replied, coming quickly up to me. It was my turn again.

"What are you doing down here—fighting?" I put in fatuously.

"What the hell you think I'm doing?" he rejoined.

I now felt quite sure that he was an American. Further offerings of similar "language of small variety but great strength" testified to his sojourn in the States.

"You betcha I'm a 'Merican," he reiterated, "though I was over there but two years. My name is August Bidden. I worked in a lumber-mill in Wagner, Wisconsin. Came back here to visit my family. The war broke out. I was a Reservist and joined my regiment. I'm here on scout-duty. Got to find out when the Germans come back into the city."

"Been in any battles?"

"You betcha," he replied.

"Kill any Germans?"

"You betcha."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"You betcha."

"Any around here now?"

"You betcha. A lot of them down in the bushes over the brook." Then his eyes flashed a sudden fire as though an inspired idea had struck him. "There's no superior officer around," he exclaimed confidentially. "Come right down with me and you can take a pot- shot at the damned Boches with my rifle." He said it with the air of a man offering a rare treat to his best friend. I felt that it devolved on me to exhibit a proper zest for this little shooting-party and save my reputation without risking my skin. So I said eagerly:

"Now are you dead sure that the Germans are down there!" implying that I couldn't afford any time unless the shooting was good.

"You betcha they're down there," was his disconcerting reply. "You can see their green-gray uniforms. I counted sixteen or seventeen of them."

The thought of that sixteen-to-one shot made my cheeks take on the color of the German uniforms. The naked truth was my last resort. It was the only thing that could prevent my zealous friend from dragging me forcibly down to the brookside. He may have heard the chattering of my teeth. At any rate he looked up and exclaimed, "What's the matter? You 'fraid?"

I replied without any hesitation, "You betcha."

The happy arrival of the photographer at this juncture, however, redeemed my fallen reputation; for a soldier is always peculiarly amenable to the charms of the camera and is even willing to quit fighting to get his picture taken.

This photograph happens to hit off our little episode exactly. It shows Ridden serene, smiling, confident, and my sort of evasive hangdog look as though, in popular parlance, I had just "got one put over me."

Then, while seated on a battered wall, Ridden poured out his story of the last two months of hardships and horrors. It was the single individual's share in the terrific gruelling that the Belgian army had received while it was beaten back from the eastern frontier to its stand on the river Scheldt. Always being promised aid by the Allies if they would hold out just a little longer, they were led again and again frantically to pit their puny strength against the overwhelming tide out of the North. For the moment they would stay it. Eagerly they would listen for sounds of approaching help, asking every stranger when it was coming. It never came. From position to position they fell back, stubbornly fighting, a flaming pillar of sparks and clouds of smoke marking the path of their retreat.

Though smashed and broken that army was never crushed. Its spirit was incarnate in this cheerful and undaunted Ridden. He recounted his privations as nonchalantly as if it was just the way that he had planned to spend his holiday. As a farewell token he presented me with an epaulet from an officer he had killed, and a pin from a German woman spy he had captured.

"Be sure to visit me when you get back to America," I cried out down the street to him.

He stood waving his hand in farewell as in greeting, the same happy ingenuous look upon his face and sending after me in reply the same old confident standby, "You betcha." But I do not cherish a great hope of ever seeing Ridden again. The chances are that, like most of the Belgian army, he is no longer treading the gray streets of those demolished cities, but whatever golden streets there may be in the City Celestial. War is race suicide. It kills the best and leaves behind the undermuscled and the under-brained to propagate the species.

Striking farther into the heart of the ruins, we beheld in a section all burned and shattered to the ground a building which stood straight up like a cliff intact and undamaged amidst the general wreckage. As we stumbled over the debris, imagine our surprise when an old lady of about seventy thrust her head out of a basement window. She was the owner of the house, and while the city had been the fighting ground for the armies she had, through it all, bravely stuck to her home.

"I was born here, I have always lived here, and I am going to die here," she said, with a look of pride upon her kindly face.

Madame Callebaut-Ringoot was her name. During the bombardment of the town she had retired to the cellar; but when the Germans entered to burn the city she stood there at the door watching the flames rolling up from the warehouses and factories in the distance. Nearer and nearer came the billowing tide of fire. A fountain of sparks shooting up from a house a few hundred yards away marked the advance of the firing squad into her street, but she never wavered. Down the street came the spoilers, relentless, ruthless, and remorseless, sparing nothing. They came like priests of the nether world, anointing each house with oil from the petrol flasks and with a firebrand dedicating it to the flames. Every one, panic-stricken, fled before them. Every one but this old lady, who stood there bidding defiance to all the Kaiser's horses and all the Kaiser's men.

"I saw them smashing in the door of the house across the way," said Madame Callebaut, "and when the flames burst forth they rushed over here, and I fell down on my knees before them, crying out, 'For the love of Heaven, spare an old woman's house!'"

It must have been a dramatic, soul-curdling sight, with the wail of the woman rising above the crashing walls and the roaring flames. And it must have been effective pleading to stop men in their wild rush lusting to destroy. But Madame Callebaut was endowed with powerful emotions. Carried away in her recital of the events, she fell down on her knees before me, wringing her hands and pleading so piteously that I felt for a moment as if I were a fiendish Teuton with a firebrand about to set the old lady's house afire. I can understand how the wildest men capitulated to such pleadings, and how they came down the steps to write, in big, clear words,

"NICHT ANBRENNEN"
(Do not set fire)

Only they unwittingly wrote it upon her neighbor's walls, thus saving both houses.

How much a savior of other homes Madame Callebaut had been Termonde will never know. Certainly she made the firing squad first pause in the wild debauch of destruction. For frequently now an undamaged house stood with the words chalked on its front, "Only harmless old woman lives here; do not burn down." Underneath were the numbers and initials of the particular corps of the Kaiser's Imperial Army. Often the flames had committed Lese majeste by leaping onto the forbidden house, and there amidst the charred ruins stood a door or a wall bearing the mocking inscription, "Nicht Anbrennen."

Another house, belonging to Madame Louise Bal, bore the words, "Protected; Gute alte Leute hier" (good old people here). A great shell from a distant battery had totally disregarded this sign and had torn through the parlor, exploding in the back yard, ripping the clothes from the line, but touching neither of the inmates. As the Chinese ambassador pertinently remarked when reassured by Whitlock that the Germans would not bombard the embassies, "Ah! but a cannon has no eyes."

These houses stood up like lone survivors above the wreckage wrought by fire and shell, and by contrast served to emphasize the dismal havoc everywhere. "So this was once a city," one mused to himself; "and these streets, now sounding with the footfalls of some returning sentry, did they once echo with the roar of traffic? And those demolished shops, were they once filled with the babble of the traders? Over yonder in that structure, which looks so much like a church, did the faithful once come to pray and to worship God? Can it be that these courtyards, now held in the thrall of death-like silence, once rang to the laughter of the little children?" One said to himself, "Surely this is some wild dream. Wake up."

But hardly a dream, for here were the ruins of a real city, and fresh ruins, too. Still curling up from the church was smoke from the burning rafters, and over there the hungry dogs, and the stragglers mournfully digging something out of the ruins. However preposterous it seemed, none the less it was a city that yesterday ran high with the tide of human life. And thousands of people, when they recall the lights and shadows, the pains and raptures, which make up the thing we call life, will think of Termonde. Thousands of people, when they think of home and all the tender memories that cluster round that word, say "Termonde."' And now where Termonde was there is a big black ragged spot—an ugly gaping wound in the landscape. There are a score of other wounds like that.

There are thousands of them.

There is one bleeding in every Belgian heart.

The sight of their desolated cities cut the soldiers to the quick.

They turned the names of those cities into battle cries. Shouting "Remember Termonde and Louvain," these Belgians sprang from the trenches and like wild men flung themselves upon the foe.