Once it was at a skirmish. Behind a
street defense, crouched thirty Belgian soldiers. Shrapnel began to
burst over us, and the bullets tumbled on the cobbles. With each puff of
the shrapnel, like a paper bag exploding, releasing a handful of white
smoke, the men flattened against the walls and dove into the open doors.
The sound of shrapnel is the same sound as hailstones, a crisp crackle
as they strike and bounce. We ran and picked them up. They were blunted
by smiting on the paving. Any one of them would have plowed into soft
flesh and found the bone and shattered it. They seem harmless because
they make so little noise. They don't scream and wail and thunder. Our
guns, back on the hillocks of the Ghent road, grew louder and more
frequent. Each minute now was cut into by a roar, or a fainter rumble.
The battle was on. Our barricaded street was a pocket in the storm, like
the center of a typhoon.
Yonder we could see the canal, fifty feet away, at the foot of our
street. On the farther side behind the river front houses lay the
Germans, ready to sally out and charge. It would be all right if they
came quickly. But a few hours of waiting for them on an empty stomach,
and having them disappoint us, was wearing. We wished they would hurry
and have it over with, or else go away for good. Civilians stumbling and
bleeding went past us.
And that was how the morning went by, heavy footed, unrelieved, with a
sense of waiting for a sudden crash and horror.
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