FOOTNOTES:

Can anyone realise fully the kind of life Belgian soldiers are leading, even now that the essential military works are completed? A division guarding a sector of the front invariably divides its time between duty in the trenches, outpost duty and rest. Rest! magic word! You would like to think that our men enjoy a blissful calm, long hours of pleasant freedom, lounging about all the day, almost forgetful of the war and its cruel chances. Alack! how far the reality falls short of this seductive vision! "Rest" means shelter in comfortless hutments or squalid cantonments, with a truss of straw to serve as bed. Fatigue duties are needed to prepare, load up and move the materials for all the works whose upkeep and completion demandconstant care. Then there are the long route marches to keep the troops in perfect training, and drill in which military instruction is given and our men are taught the latest modes of fighting with a view to making future attacks. At night come alarms and enemy shells bombarding their quarters and poisoning them with asphyxiating gases.

When on outpost duty in the second-line positions one must always be ready for a fight. When the German guns concentrate an intense fire upon certain sectors, one must wait stolidly and stoically in the shelters which a single shell can blow to atoms. Then, too, whenever the chance is offered, one must toil to restore defence works which are as constantly knocked to pieces again. With nightfall come the reliefs, a long and tiresome business, surrounded by deadly peril if the enemy be on his guard and puts up a barrage, searching the ground with sudden, furious bursts of machine-gun fire.

In the trenches one has to keep a close and cautious lookout, always watching the enemy's lines, mind and body ever alert, while pitiless death prowls about and threatens at every point. At times, no doubt, the hours pass slowly with tiresome monotony. A heavy silence broods over this corner of the great battlefield wherein the Belgian soldiers, tramping along the bottom of the trenches or huddled in a dark shelter, dream at length of all that they have in tender memory, the affections, the hopes left behind them in the country now oppressed and tyrannised over by the invader. Their souls are full of bitterness, as with fixed stare they dumbly surrender themselves to their sad musings. A mad desire comes over them to clasp again to their breast, if only for a moment, some suffering dear one—whether still living or with eyes closed for ever in death, they do not know. So violent an access of home-sickness sweeps over them that at times they cannot restrain their tears.

Then, suddenly, all heads are raised: eyes flash like points of steel. Let a shell whistle over the trenches and burst a few yards further on, and these men, who a moment ago were numbed by their gloomy broodings, become in a trice the fighters whose keenness awakes when danger threatens.

Explosions, nearer and yet nearer. The earth quivers under the continuous shell-bursts. An acrid smoke spreadsin the trenches, now all alive. The men rush to arms. With an eye glued to their peep-holes the look-outs feverishly scrutinise the enemy's lines, while the infantry lean against the broad, high parapets or crouch in their dug-outs, stoically waiting for the rain of steel and fire to cease falling about their ears.

A FRONT-LINE TRENCH IN THE SOUTHERN SECTOR OF THE BELGIAN FRONT

A FOOTBRIDGE THROUGH THE FLOODS

Replaces a Road and carries a Narrow-gauge Railway.]

AN OUTPOST AMONG THE FLOODS

Armed with Machine-guns.

But the bombardment, far from dying down, seems to increase in fury. Here come grenades and torpedoes, bursting everywhere with a terrible din, excavating huge holes in the ground, throwing up great sheaves of earth and mud, scattering sand-bags, stakes, planks and beams in all directions, demolishing with fiendish persistency the ramparts built so painstakingly by our stubborn workers.

We on our part have been prompt to reply to the enemy's fire. Our gunners are already busy; mortars and bomb-throwers discharge a stream of projectiles into the opposite trenches without intermission. And soon, far away on the plain, the batteries also lift up their voices. The long-drawn-out, deep growls of the heavy guns mingle with the sharp barks of the "soixante-quinze." Everything round about the bombarded trench seems to be engulfed in the terrific uproar.

The struggle continues obstinately, with periodic bursts of excessive violence, until the enemy's fire is mastered and dies away into silence. When quiet returns, the officer of the guard, in his half-demolished post, pens his terse report by the flickering light of a candle:—

"To-day, from 4 to 8 p.m., the trench occupied by my company was heavily bombarded. Shells and bombs have damaged our works very seriously for about 50 yards. Two shelters were entirely destroyed. The men behaved splendidly in spite of heavy losses: 10 killed, 27 wounded—a dozen severely. Stretcher-bearers just arrived. The company has got to work again. Moral excellent."

* * * * * *

Some may imagine that the Belgian troops must have had their readiness to attack blunted, and their desire to leap over the entanglements and hurl themselves on the enemy weakened, by their long immobility in the same trenches, by the never-ending construction of defensiveworks, by the interminable residence in the same monotonous environment.

But they are wrong. Their sadly mistaken conclusions would soon be corrected could they but see how eagerly our soldiers contend for the honour of taking part in those adventurous patrols in No Man's Land and in the risky reconnaissances towards the German lines. If 10 volunteers be called for, a hundred offer themselves. Hardly a night passes without some expeditions of this kind being set on foot. Then are fought in the darkness weird and deadly combats, wherein our men display magnificent courage and wonderful dash.

Neither bad weather nor suffering can quench their desire to conquer and their hot eagerness to fling themselves upon the enemy and hunt him out of the country which he has remorselessly despoiled. As the soldiers of justice and right, they wish to be—and will be—the soldiers also of deliverance and liberty. They know that their hour is coming and that they cannot choose it; but they are ready to throw themselves heart and soul into the thick of the fray when they get the impatiently awaited signal.

Meanwhile they are content simply to do their hard duty in what remains of a free country—a tiny corner of Belgium where the eye sees nothing but a vast battlefield with its ruins; its camps, bubbling with active life; its hospitals, homes of suffering; its cemeteries, too, where rest those who died for their fatherland.

Printed in Great Britain by Alabaster, Passmore & Sons, Ltd., London and Maidstone.

FOOTNOTES:[A]SeeLes Batailles de la Marne(Die Schlachten an der Marne), by An Officer of the German General Staff. Translated from the German by Th. Buyse. Van Œst & Cie, Paris, 1917.[B]Going into detail, we may point out that 60 kilometres of fire and communication trenches are included in the area of the front line organised defensivelyfor a single division occupying but a very narrow sector.[C]For information on this subject, consultLes Établissements d'artillerie belges pendant la guerre, by Captain Willy Breton. Berger-Levrault, Paris and Nancy, 1917.

[A]SeeLes Batailles de la Marne(Die Schlachten an der Marne), by An Officer of the German General Staff. Translated from the German by Th. Buyse. Van Œst & Cie, Paris, 1917.

[B]Going into detail, we may point out that 60 kilometres of fire and communication trenches are included in the area of the front line organised defensivelyfor a single division occupying but a very narrow sector.

[C]For information on this subject, consultLes Établissements d'artillerie belges pendant la guerre, by Captain Willy Breton. Berger-Levrault, Paris and Nancy, 1917.

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