And the price Belgium paid for that resistance was the massacre
of women and children and the house-to-house burning of homes.
Since rendering that service for all time to France and England, through
twenty months of such a life as exiles know, the Belgians have fought on
doggedly, recovering from the misery of the Antwerp retreat, and showing
a resilience of spirit equaled only by the Fusiliers Marins of France.
One afternoon in late June my friend Robert Toms was sitting on the
beach at La Panne, watching the soldiers swimming in the channel.
Suddenly he called to me, and aimed his camera. There on the sand in the
sunlight the Belgian army was changing its clothes. The faithful suits
of blue, rained on and trench-worn, were being tossed into great heaps
on the beach and brand-new yellow khaki, clothes and cap, was buckled
on. It was a transformation. We had learned to know that army, and their
uniform had grown familiar and pleasant to us. The dirt, ground in till
it became part of the texture; the worn cloth, shapeless, but yet molded
to the man by long association--all was an expression of the stocky
little soldier inside. The new khaki hung slack. Caps were overlarge for
Flemish heads. To us, watching the change, it was the loss of the last
possession that connected them with their past; with homes and country
gone, now the very clothing that had covered them through famous fights
was shuffled off.
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