I watched him walk erect where
even the renowned fighting men of an allied race were stooping and
hiding, because he held his life as nothing when there were wounded to
be rescued. I saw Lieutenant Robert de Broqueville, son of the prime
minister of Belgium, go into Dixmude on the afternoon when the town was
leveled by German guns. He remained there under one of the heaviest
bombardments of the war for three hours, picking up the wounded who lay
on curbs and in cellars and under debris. The troops had been ordered
to evacuate the town, and it was a lonely job that this youngster of
twenty-seven years carried on through that day.
I have seen the Belgians every day for several months. I have seen
several skirmishes and battles and many days of shell-fire, and the
impression of watching many thousand Belgians in action is that of
excellent fighting qualities, starred with bits of sheer daring as
astonishing as that of the other races. With no country left to fight
for, homes either in ruin or soon to be shelled, relatives under an
alien rule, the home Government on a foreign soil, still this second
army, the first having been killed, fights on in good spirit. Every
morning of the summer I have passed boys between eighteen and
twenty-five, clad in fresh khaki, as they go riding down the poplar lane
from La Panne to the trenches, the first twenty with bright silver
bugles, their cheeks puffed and red with the blowing.
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