They were sailor
boys. They covered the retreat of the Belgian army. They consolidated
the Yser position by holding Dixmude for three weeks against a German
force that outnumbered them. Then for a year, up to a few months ago,
they helped to hold the Nieuport section, the last northern point of the
Allied line. When they entered the fight at Melle in October, 1914, our
corps worked with one of their doctors, and came to know him. Later he
took charge of a dressing station near St. George. Here one day the
Germans made a sudden sortie, drove back the Fusiliers for a few
minutes, and killed the Red Cross roomful, bayoneting the wounded men.
The Fusiliers shortly won back their position, found their favorite
doctor dead, and in a fury wiped out the Germans who had murdered him
and his patients, saving one man alive. They sent him back to the
enemy's lines to say:
"Tell your men how we fight when you bayonet our wounded."
That sudden act of German falseness was the product of slow, careful
undermining of moral values.
One of the best known women in Belgium, whose name I dare not give, told
me of her friends, the G----'s, at L---- (she gave me name and
address). When the first German rush came down on Belgium the household
was asked to shelter German officers, one of whom the lady had known
socially in peace days. The next morning soldiers went through the
house, destroying paintings with the bayonet and wrecking furniture.
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