Courtesy of "J'ai Vu."A Belgian Boy Hero.Twice decorated by King Albert for service at the front and for discovering dangerous military spies.
Courtesy of "J'ai Vu."A Belgian Boy Hero.Twice decorated by King Albert for service at the front and for discovering dangerous military spies.
Courtesy of "J'ai Vu."
A Belgian Boy Hero.
Twice decorated by King Albert for service at the front and for discovering dangerous military spies.
One of the men, a hunchback, very powerful in build despite his distorted frame and who was known as the cleverest man in the village, came shuffling up beside them.
"You are going, M. Maubin?"
"It is evident."
"And where?"
"My old regiment is at Boncelles," the reservist answered, "I hope to be allowed to join it. They will know, at Liége, where I can be of the most service."
"Reynders and Vourdet also are going. They leave to-morrow," the hunchback said, naming two of the older villagers.
"It would be better, M. Croquier," rejoined the master, "if they went to-night."
"Why?" queried the other, in response, as he kept beside the three, his shambling gait keeping pace with their brisk walk. "You don't think a day will make any difference, do you, M. Maubin? Our good forts will keep the Germans back for a month, at least. Brialmont declared they were impregnable."
"Maybe," said the old patriot, "and maybe not.Brialmont's plans were made twenty years ago. This lad and I will help to keep the invaders back to-night. The Germans are prepared, we are not. Every rifle counts."
"I will see Reynders and Vourdet at once," the hunchback answered, eagerly. "They shall hear what you have said. Perhaps they, too, will go to-night. Good fortune!"
"Good-bye!" the master said.
The old reservist and the two boys, one on either side of him, passed the outskirts of Beaufays and struck out upon the road leading into Liége. It was a glorious evening, after a sultry day. The roads were heavy with dust, but a light breeze had sprung up.
Here and there a home with a little garden nestled beside a swift-flowing brook. The magpies flickered black and white among the thickets. The crows cawed loudly of their coming feast on early walnuts, not knowing that the plans of the German General Staff were providing for them a fattening feast on the horrid fruits of war. The crops were ripe for harvest. All was peaceful to view, but a sullen shaking vibration at irregular intervals told the cannons' tale of destruction and slaughter. Little, however, did any of the threerealize that the smiling landscape was already ringed with steel or that the road they trod would, on the morrow, shake with the trampling of the iron-gray German hosts.
"I told them at home," said Deschamps, breaking the silence, "that you said every one would be needed. Why is there such a hurry, sir? Can't our regular army hold the forts?"
"No," said the master, "I am afraid not, because the Germans are counting on speed and surprise. They must take Liége and they must take it quickly."
"I don't see why," the lad objected. "Can't the Germans march either to the north or south of Liége and avoid the forts altogether?"
"They can, of course," the old reservist answered, "but that wouldn't do them any good. It is a question of the Line of Communication. An army is composed of human beings. First and foremost it must be fed. Remember Lord Kitchener's famous address to the Punjab Rifles:
"'You must not get into the way of thinking,' he said, 'that men can go on fighting interminably. Men get hungry, men get thirsty, men get tired. In real warfare, where many hours of hard marching and fighting may pass before you achieve success,you have to ask yourselves at the critical moment:
"'Can I trust my men, with gnawing pains of hunger in their stomachs, with a depressing sense of having suffered casualties and with fatigue in all their limbs; can I trust them to press upon the retreating enemy and crush him? Men cannot fight well unless they are fed well, and men cannot fight when they are tired. More than once on active service, I have taken the ammunition out of my ammunition carts and loaded them up with bully beef.'
"I could go on and point out to you that troops must be properly sheltered and properly equipped. Even without any battles, an army will have a considerable proportion of its men in hospitals from sickness, and, after the first battle, there are thousands of wounded to be surgically treated and nursed. What is true of men is true also of the horses for the cavalry and artillery; they cannot advance unless they are fed, nor when they are tired.
"Moreover, a modern army fights mainly with gunnery and rifle fire, very little with cold steel. Guns and rifles are useless without ammunition. Machine guns will fire 30,000 shots in an hour.Both light and heavy artillery depend for their results on continuous hammering. For every step in advance that troops make, they must be followed with food for the men, food for the horses, and food for the guns.
"Think, boys, of the size of a modern army. One single army corps of two divisions of three brigades each, contains over 43,000 combatants. Of this, over one half is infantry, the rest including the machine gun sections, the field artillery, the heavy artillery, the siege artillery and engineering and signal corps. It takes 9,000 non-combatants in the field to look after this army, the train including ten provision columns, with special field bakeries and field slaughter-houses, ten ammunition columns, twelve field hospitals, to say nothing of special bridge sections and a host of minor but essential units. Picture to yourselves the amount of food which has to be transported to feed these 52,000 men three times a day, most of which has to be brought from long distances to the front and there cooked and distributed. Conceive the thousands of tons of cartridges and shells needed to supply the infantry and the various kinds of artillery!
"The Line of Communication is the only thingwhich keeps an army going, which enables it to operate. If that be cut, the guns are silenced and the army starves. It is absolutely imperative to every advancing army that its rear, its Line of Communication, be safe from attack by the enemy. It is the artery which carries its life-blood. You can easily see that, for such an immense transportation work, control of the railways of a country is the first chief need of an invading army. No wagon system could provision an army or keep it supplied with munitions.
"Liége is Belgium's eastern railroad center. Six miles north of the forts of Liége lies the frontier of Holland. South of Liége lies the broken, mountainous country of the Ardennes, uncrossed by railways and impossible as a line of transport. Troops could only march through the difficult Ardennes country if they were sure of being able to secure supplies when they had reached the other side.
"Certainly, Deschamps, as you suggest, the German Army could divide and march by roads north and south of Liége. Suppose it did so. What then? After the main army had passed, we could sally forth from Liége, cut the Line of Communication and, by starvation and lack of ammunition,compel the surrender of the whole invading army.
"No, boys, not only must the Germans enter Liége, but they must capture every single fort before it is safe for them to proceed. Not until the last gun is silenced in Forts Loncin, Flemalle and Boncelles is Western Europe threatened. When Liége falls, Belgium falls, and if the fall comes too quickly, the whole of Western Europe may go."
"But will Liége fall?" asked Horace.
"That," answered the master, "is what we are going to see."
He held up his hand for silence.
"The shots are coming nearer," he said.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the ground shook with a heavy detonation and both the boys staggered.
"That was not a German shell," declared the old reservist; "that was one of our forts replying."
"Fort Embourg?" queried Deschamps.
"Undoubtedly." He turned to the younger lad. "You will have to go back, Monroe," he said. "If Liége is already in a state of siege, you have no right to enter the ring of forts."
"Can't I go at least as far as Embourg?" begged Horace. "You might let me see one shot, sir."
"I only hope you won't see too many," answered the master, "but, if you're so keen about it, you may come as far as the ring of forts. At the cross-roads leading to Tilff, you must turn back."
"By Mother Canterre's bakery?"
"Exactly," said the master, smiling a trifle grimly. "But you need not expect to buy any little cakes there, now that the guns of Embourg have begun to reply. You may be sure that Mother Canterre has been sent away into safety. The forts must be left clear."
"I wish I were like Deschamps," declared Horace, enviously, "going right into the very thick of it!"
"I'm not so sure that Deschamps will go 'into the thick of it,' as you call it," responded the old reservist; "a raw recruit is not likely to be sent direct to the fighting front. It is much more likely that he will be sent back to cover Brussels or Antwerp."
"But if we are defending ourselves and there is such need for haste," said Deschamps, "why doI have to enlist as a soldier at all? Why can't I just take a rifle and join in?"
The master listened intently to the explosion of a bursting shell some distance away, before he replied.
"It is one of the recognized rules of war," he said, when the sound of the shell-burst had died away, "that battles are fought between the armies of opposing countries, not between the civilian populations of those countries. A civilian, not in uniform, who is caught in the act of fighting with the enemy, is treated as a spy and shot. The Germans even refused to recognize the organized Frenchfranc-tireursin the war of 1871.[2]True, the Hague Convention permits an invaded people to take up arms to defend itself, but it is not likely that Germany will pay any attention to the rules of civilized warfare, even though she signed them.
"Treaties mean nothing to the Kaiser's government, which has declared, 'the State is a law unto itself,' and again, 'Weak nations have not the same right to live as stronger nations,' and yet again, 'the State is the sole judge of themorality of its own actions.' Massacre and barbarism lie behind Germany's announcement that 'if a single non-combatant in a city or village fires a shot against occupying troops, that city or village shall be considered as having rendered itself liable to pillage.' That means, Deschamps, that if you should fire a single shot in defense of your own home, before you join the army, the Germans would deem that a sufficient excuse for burning and sacking the entire town of Liége."
A shell screeched over them, exploding on the further side of a small hill to their left.
The master looked startled, but neither of the boys showed any signs of fear.
"Is that what a shell sounds like?" asked Horace curiously. "I thought it was much louder."
The master cast a sidewise glance at him.
"Have you ever seen a large shell burst?" he asked.
"No," responded the boy.
"After you do," the old reservist commented, "you will feel differently."
Another shell, not quite as near, whistled behind them.
"They may hit us!" exclaimed Deschamps, witha nervous laugh, the incredulity in his tone revealing how little he realized his danger, nor the devastation wrought by a modern shell.
"Go back, Monroe," said the master, quickening his steps.
Horace kept step by step beside him.
"You said I might go to the corner," he protested; "it's only a little way further."
From over the hill came drifting a smell of acrid smoke.
"Do you think I'll see—" began Horace.
An earth-shaking detonation cut short his words, and, in the early dusk, the flash and the cauliflower cloud of smoke could be seen arising from the fort.
"We're replying," cried the old patriot, elation in his voice. "Wait till they come within range of our 6-inch guns!"
A turn of the road brought them within direct sight of Fort Embourg.
"Look!" cried the master, "they're going to fire again!"
The boys halted.
As they looked, from the smoothly-cropped grass mound slowly arose an enormous steel-gray mushroom, like the dream of some goblin multiplieda thousandfold. Then, suddenly, without a sign or sound of warning, this dome belched flame and smoke, rocking the earth around. Then down, down sank the grim gray mushroom, leaving no mark of its presence save the green mound on which, the day before, sheep had been grazing, and the drifting puff of smoke overhead.
The exhilaration of the boys dropped. There was something terrible and malign in the slow rising of that goblin dome, in its sudden ferocity and in its noiseless disappearance.
"That shell will strike several miles away," the old reservist said, "perhaps where men are now fighting. If so, then you have seen a burden of death, of suffering and of carnage starting on its way. War is a horrible thing, boys, a horrible thing! But," he added sadly, "it is a necessity from which the world will never be free."
A hundred yards farther brought them to the cross-roads.
"Here you must go back, Monroe."
Horace looked wistfully at the quiet road ahead of him, winding peacefully under its green cloud of trees.
"I've never been in a war," he said. "I do want to see a little bit of this one!"
Courtesy of "The Graphic."Smoke, the Herald of Death.A 12-inch howitzer behind the British lines on the Somme, smashing the German lines several miles away.
Courtesy of "The Graphic."Smoke, the Herald of Death.A 12-inch howitzer behind the British lines on the Somme, smashing the German lines several miles away.
Courtesy of "The Graphic."
Smoke, the Herald of Death.
A 12-inch howitzer behind the British lines on the Somme, smashing the German lines several miles away.
"Count yourself happy," said the old reservist solemnly, "for every hour of your life up to this time that has been free from sight or sound of war. You—"
A crash and a flare!
A blast of fire struck the boy in the face and all became blank.
Then, slowly, slowly, out from a black void, Horace felt his consciousness struggling back. It was as though his brain were a jagged mountain which his mind was trying to climb. With an inward panic, he opened his eyes.
He found himself in a clump of bushes, stunned and dazed. Gropingly he passed his hands over his face.
His eyebrows and eyelashes were gone, scorched away by the flame. There was a smell of singeing on his clothes. A terrific nausea possessed him, caused, though he did not know it, by the vacuum produced by the shell-burst. Otherwise he was unhurt.
Painfully and with a strong feeling of unreality, the boy staggered to his feet and looked around him.
In the road was a deep hole, upon which a cloud of dust was slowly settling. The air still seemedto rock backwards and forwards with the vibration, and the falling leaves whirled irregularly to the ground.
But—where were the others?
For the moment, Horace lost his nerve.
"Where are they? Where are they?" he screamed, his high-pitched cry rasping his blistered throat.
Then,
"Steady, Monroe," he heard a voice behind him. "You will need all your courage."
Horace turned at the words.
The master was kneeling at the side of the road, beside Deschamps, who was stretched out limply, the blood oozing from a wound in his forehead.
The sight steadied Horace at once. He got a grip on himself, though he was still dizzy and sick with the shock of the shell and his head was ringing painfully. One ear seemed deaf. A black giddiness seized him as he crossed the road with staggering, uncertain steps.
"Is he killed?" asked Horace.
"No," answered the master, "but badly hurt. His wound will need instant attention. Unhinge a shutter from the cottage over there."
Running with stumbling steps to the desertedbake-shop, Horace lifted from its hinges one of the long shutters and dragged it back to where his comrade lay.
"Put him on this," said the master softly.
Together they lifted the would-be recruit and laid him gently on the shutter, then picked up the burden, the master taking the head and Horace the feet.
"Where to, sir?" asked Horace, as he took a firm grip on the improvised stretcher.
"To Embourg Village," was the reply; "we must find a doctor at once."
They had not gone another two hundred yards when the screech of an approaching shell was heard.
"Put him down," cried the master, "and lie down flat yourself!"
Horace did not delay. Gently, but rapidly, he lowered his end of the stretcher and laid himself flat on the bed of the road. He had hardly touched ground when a shell hit a house not more than eighty yards in front of them. The boy saw the great shell, like a black streak, just before it struck. Then, even before he heard the explosion, he saw the whole house lift itself into the air, quite silently.
"Put your fingers in your ears!" cried the master.
Horace saw the gesture but the words were lost in a terrific roar which projected the air in waves which seemed almost solid as they struck. In the place where the house had stood there remained only a rising column of brick-dust, rosy red. Above this towered a petaled cloud of black smoke, and above this, again, a fountain compounded of particles of the house, of earth, and of shell driven upwards by the force of the explosion.
Horace no longer felt any eagerness to see shell-fire. He was thoroughly frightened. A look of panic had crept into his eyes. Not for the world, though, would he have admitted it. He did not try to speak. His throat was parched and the roof of his mouth was dry.
They picked up the stretcher in silence.
"Here is the doctor's house," said the master, as they entered the village, and, turning, met the young surgeon on his way out of the gate.
"Patient for you, Doctor!" said the master.
"Father will attend to him," came the reply, "I'm hurrying to Liége. They need me there. What is it? Accident case?"
"Shell splinter," said the master.
The doctor halted and turned back.
"Already!" he exclaimed.
Horace and the master carried their burden into the house, the doctor following them.
"I'll look at him," he said, "and let Father dress the wound. He hasn't practiced for ten years, but every medical man will have to work now, I'm thinking."
They laid Deschamps on the operating table.
Quickly and deftly the young surgeon unwound the bandages which the master had tied around the wounded lad's head, and examined the injury carefully.
Then he reached for his instruments.
"He will be blind," he said, "totally blind, without hope of recovery."
"He was to have been an artist," said the master.
"Yes," replied the surgeon. "War is made up of broken lives!"
FOOTNOTES:[1]The master could not have said this in 1914, for the secret documents were not made public until 1918. The author makes him say it, here, to show the political moves clearly.[2]Later in August, 1914, Germany declared that the Belgian Garde Civique would be considered as non-combatant. It was therefore dismissed, though afterwards reformed.
[1]The master could not have said this in 1914, for the secret documents were not made public until 1918. The author makes him say it, here, to show the political moves clearly.
[1]The master could not have said this in 1914, for the secret documents were not made public until 1918. The author makes him say it, here, to show the political moves clearly.
[2]Later in August, 1914, Germany declared that the Belgian Garde Civique would be considered as non-combatant. It was therefore dismissed, though afterwards reformed.
[2]Later in August, 1914, Germany declared that the Belgian Garde Civique would be considered as non-combatant. It was therefore dismissed, though afterwards reformed.
THE HEROES OF THE FORTS
The whistling shells burst over Fort Embourg, near by, with ever-increasing frequency, while the surgeon, oblivious to their menace, worked over the wounded boy. The vibrations of the 6-inch guns, as the forts replied, shook the house, but no one flinched or spoke while the doctor busied himself with his patient. At last, having rebandaged the wound, he stepped back and said,
"There, now, I think he'll do."
"Where shall we take him, Doctor?" queried the master. "There isn't any hospital in Embourg, nor in Beaufays, and Liége will have sufficient problems to face in taking care of its own wounded."
"The boy can stay here," the doctor replied. "Father will treat him and Mother will do all the nursing necessary."
He looked off into the distance with lowered eyebrows.
"If all comes true that people have prophesiedabout the terrors of modern war," the surgeon continued, thoughtfully, "it's likely that every woman in Belgium will have to become a nurse."
"Couldn't I stay and help to take care of Deschamps, sir?" asked Horace.
"No," the master answered, "you're within the zone of fire as it is. You must return to Beaufays without delay."
Horace would have protested but that he knew the master's words were not to be gainsaid.
"Did you say that you were on your way to Liége?" asked the doctor abruptly, turning to the old reservist.
"Yes," was the reply.
"Let us go together, then," the doctor said, "for Belgium will need my case of surgical instruments as much as she will need your rifle. Wait a moment until I call Father."
He returned a minute or two later accompanied by a small and withered but keen-eyed old man, whom he introduced to the master and Horace, and to whom he described with technical detail the injuries suffered by the lad who was still extended, motionless, on the operating table.
"Very well, Hilaire," answered the old man, in a high, reedy voice, "leave the patient to me,my son. I have not forgotten all that I once knew. Not yet, oh, no!"
He turned to the master.
"My son, Monsieur, my son!" he said, paternally. "It is something of which we may be proud, is it not, when our children carry on the work which we have begun?"
The old man patted the young surgeon on the arm, talking garrulously the while.
"A good boy, Monsieur, a good boy," he said. "I was the first to teach him, but he has outstripped me. Then, too, his wrist has the steadiness of youth, while mine—"
He held out a shaking hand.
"But the brain is clear still, Monsieur," he went on, "do not fear. Your pupil shall have the best of care."
He walked feebly to the operating table. There, his whole figure changed. Unconsciously his back straightened, his hand ceased to tremble, and, as he bent over the patient, his eyes narrowed with the penetration that they must have borne twenty years before.
The master observed him closely.
"The lad is in good hands," he said, in a low voice; "come, let us go."
He turned to the aged physician.
"Monsieur," he said, "I feel it is an honor that we of the older generation can still serve Belgium. The first young victim of this war is in your keeping. I—" he paused, "I have no children, only the children of my school. It is my child, therefore, Monsieur, that I leave with you."
"He shall be as a child of mine," the old man answered.
Father and son embraced and the little party of three left the doctor's house.
At the gate the master paused.
"Monroe," he said, "you must get back to Beaufays as quickly as you can. Try to be there before it is altogether dark. Lose no time, but do not go by the road. Strike south across the fields from here until you come to the river (Ourthe), then follow the banks as far as the road from Tilff, whence it will be safe to take the Beaufays road."
"Why do you suggest such a roundabout way?" asked the surgeon. "The lad won't escape danger by making a circuit. Shells drop anywhere and everywhere. You can't dodge them by taking to the fields instead of the road."
The reservist shook his head.
"There you are wrong, Doctor," he said. "How many shells have fallen in Embourg Village? None. Yet we are but three-quarters of a mile from the fort. It is only in the immediate neighborhood of the fort that there is danger. Strange though it may seem to say so, I could wish that shells were dropping in the village."
"Why?" asked the surgeon sharply.
"Because," the master rejoined, "it would demonstrate that the Germans do not possess the exact range of the fort. Their very accuracy proves that they do. For that reason, at a distance of half a mile from the fort, the lad will be safe. Nevertheless, Monroe," he added, "if you should hear a wild shell coming in your direction, throw yourself flat on the ground. The burst of an explosion is always upwards."
"I'll be careful, sir," answered the boy.
"Will you please tell Mme. Maubin that I went on to Liége in the company of Dr. Mallorbes? Say that I do not wish her to come and see Deschamps, for I am sure she will wish to do so, and give as my reason that the road running below the fort is not safe."
"I will tell her, sir," said Horace.
"You will also inform the school to-morrowabout Deschamps," the master continued. "It is a matter of pride to Beaufays, I feel, that Belgium's first wounded boy hero should be a lad from our own school. And so, good-bye!"
"Good-bye, sir; good-bye, Dr. Mallorbes," responded Horace.
He hesitated a moment, as though he would have said something more, then plunged across the fields, as the master had bidden him, back to the little village of Beaufays.
The two men watched him for a moment, until his figure was lost in the shadows of the wood on the other side of the field, then set their faces for Liége and—it might be—death.
"I am a good deal disturbed," the doctor began, as they swung out upon the road, "by your suggestion that the Germans possess the exact range of our forts. Where could they get the information?"
"Spies," the master answered. "Belgium is honeycombed with them, has been for years. You know—all the world knows—that Germany spends millions of marks yearly on her secret service system and nearly all her agents are military spies. The exact location of our forts cannot be hidden. It is not a secret. They are plain to see. What iseasier for a spy than to search the neighborhood of a fort thoroughly, perhaps on a Sunday morning walk, to find some well-hidden position for a gun of a certain caliber, and to calculate, to the last inch, the exact distance of that position from the fort? It is simplicity itself."
"What of that," said the doctor, "when the gun itself is not there?"
"But when the gun is there!" the master retorted. "When the invasion is accomplished, think of the advantage which such information gives! There is no need to send out scouting parties to bring back estimates of distances; there is no need to waste energy, time, and ammunition in trial shots, during which time the battery might be subjected to fire from the guns of the fort. None of that. Secretly and silently, probably during the night or behind a screen of cavalry, a howitzer may be dragged up to the place selected by the spy and marked in detail on a large scale map. The officer commanding the battery knows the exact direction in which the fort bears and has already worked out the exact angle of elevation for the range. He has nothing to do but to order the aim and elevation and to fire, knowing, in advance, that his shells can fall nowhere but on thefort itself. It is not marksmanship, it is mathematics."
Belgian Official Photograph.Armored Train Defending Antwerp.
Belgian Official Photograph.Armored Train Defending Antwerp.
Belgian Official Photograph.
Armored Train Defending Antwerp.
Belgian Official Photograph.Armored Car Harassing Invaders.
Belgian Official Photograph.Armored Car Harassing Invaders.
Belgian Official Photograph.
Armored Car Harassing Invaders.
"You think this has been done with the forts at Liége!" ejaculated the doctor.
"That is evident," was the reply. "See, this is a night bombardment. There are no advance posts, no aeroplanes to report back the results of gun-fire. Yet the German shells are falling on the forts with deadly precision, falling on forts which the gunners have never seen. I doubt if there is a single fortified place in Belgium of which the Germans do not possess accurate plans."
"Then you think they will break through?"
"We cannot hope to prevent it," the master answered. "The Kaiser's generals would never attack Liége unless they were confident of success. Since they know exactly what we possess for defense, they would not be sure of success unless they knew that they possessed an infinitely stronger force of attack."
"But I have heard that the forts of Liége were impregnable!"
"They were when they were built," the master answered, "but that is twenty years ago. Against the guns of that period, notably the 6-inch howitzer,they were impregnable, for every possible gun-position for a weapon of that range was covered by the guns of the fort. But if pieces of heavier power can bombard the forts from positions outside the range of the fortress guns, then impregnability is gone. You must remember, Doctor, that the power of a gun increases as the cube of its caliber or diameter of its bore. Thus a 12-inch gun is not twice as powerful as a 6-inch gun, but eight times as powerful."
"Are there such heavy guns?"
"There are," was the answer. "Field guns of 8.4-inch and 10-inch caliber are known to exist, and the German War Party is reported to hold the secret of still more powerful engines of destruction, of which, as yet, the outer world knows nothing."
"Look, you, M. Maubin," said the surgeon, "you seem to know quite a lot about these things, while I've concerned myself mainly with my medical books and haven't paid much attention to military affairs. Explain to me, if you will be so good, the significance of this contest between the fortifications of Liége and the new German guns."
"It is the death-grapple which will decide the fate of Belgium—perhaps that of Europe—withina week," the master answered. "Its outcome will settle the greatest military controversy of our times. One way or the other, it will change the face of war forever. This question is whether modern artillery has become so powerful that no permanent masonry fortification can resist it. If so, the development of two thousand years of fortification must be thrown aside as useless and defense must become mobile.
"Liége is what is known as a ring fortress, that is, the city itself is not fortified but it is ringed round with twelve forts, between two and three miles apart from each other and averaging a distance of five miles from the city. Thus the forts form a circumference of 32 miles, so arranged that if any one fort is silenced the cross-fire of the forts on either side controls the gap. Six are forts of the first order, Pontisse, Barchon, and Fléron on the north and east, Loncin, Flemalles, and Boncelles on the west and south. The other six are fortins or small forts, like Embourg."
"Are they strongly armed?" the doctor asked.
"Moderately so. They have modern guns, though not of the largest caliber. There are four hundred guns in all the forts combined, mainly 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns and 8-inch mortars. Thebig 9-inch guns, which were ordered from Krupp's for delivery more than three years ago, have never reached us. We see, now, that Germany would not allow them to be delivered. She did not intend to run the risk of invading a well-armed Belgium."
"But isn't a 6-inch a fairly big gun?"
"Not for permanent works," the master replied. "The United States has two 16-inch guns in her coast defenses and there are plenty of 12-inch guns in permanent fortifications. Naval guns, of course, are bigger. They have to be. You can't 'take cover' at sea and long ranges therefore are necessary. Modern super-Dreadnoughts,[3]armed with 15-inch guns, regard their 6-inch batteries as merely secondary.
"Our principal weakness," he continued, "is that Brialmont's full design of infantry trenches and sunken emplacements for light artillery has never been completed. Besides, our army is in a state of transition, as you know, for it is only a year and a half since a new system was put into operation. That makes it difficult for us to mobilize quickly, while Germany has been completely mobilized for some time."
"Still," responded the doctor, trying to find some hope in the outlook, "we have the advantage of being on the defensive. I've read, somewhere, that it takes three times as many men to drive an attack as to hold a line of defense."
"That is true," agreed the master.
"They can't be more than three to one," said the doctor, "so as fast as they come, we'll smash them."
"Perhaps we might have a better chance," the old reservist said, doubtfully, "if General Leman and our Third Division were here. But it's not the German soldiers of which I'm afraid, but these new howitzers."
"Why?" asked the doctor. "Isn't a howitzer a gun? What's the difference between them, anyway?"
"I'll show you the difference in a minute," the master replied, "but I want, first, to give you a clear idea of one of our big forts, so that you can realize the problem that the Germans must tackle. Each of the six main forts around Liége is built in the form of a triangle, each is placed in a commanding natural position, and each, in addition, is approached by a steep artificial mound, in the interior of which lie the works of the fort. Atthe top of the earth slope, the edge drops suddenly into a deep ditch, of which the counterscarp is a massive masonry wall topped with wire entanglements. The entire earth slope and wall is exposed to the guns of the fort, throwing shrapnel, and to fire from machine guns and rifles."
"Before the Germans get a footing in the fort, then," said the doctor, "they will have to storm a stretch of ground absolutely riddled with fire."
"They will."
"That means a heavy loss of life."
"A terrible loss of life," the master agreed. "Moreover, even should they advance in such masses that we could not kill them fast enough and thus they should storm the slope and win the ditch, they would be in a still worse plight. Powerful quick-firing guns, mounted in cupolas at each angle of the triangle, sweep the sunken ditch with an enfilading fire. No troops could live through such an inferno of bullets.
"On the main inner triangle is the infantry parapet, shaped somewhat like a heart, pierced for rifle fire and with machine-gun emplacements at the angles. In the hollow of that heart-like space rises a solid central mass of concrete, on and in which are the shelters and gun cupolas.The mortar cupolas rise from the floor of the hollow, outside the central mass. These are invisible to the foe until raised by machinery within, when they command the entire neighborhood and can fire their 6-inch shells in any direction."
The doctor rubbed his hands briskly.
"If that's the way our forts are built," he said, "and if they are well provisioned and have plenty of ammunition, we ought to be able to snap our fingers at the Kaiser. All we have to do is to wait for the Germans to come and shoot them down by thousands. They'll go packing back to Germany quick enough if we give them a reception like that."
"Perhaps," said the old reservist, "but you have forgotten about the howitzers."
"Why, yes, so I had," the doctor answered, more gravely; "you were going to tell me about them."
"The difference in principle between a gun and a howitzer or a mortar," explained the master, "is that a gun depends for its destructiveness on its striking velocity, while a howitzer depends on the power of the exploding charge of its shell. An armor-piercing shell, fired from a 15-inch naval gun, will go through the heaviest and hardest steelknown, because of the terrific speed at which it travels, with a muzzle velocity of three thousand feet a second or thirty-four miles a minute. In order not to lose speed, therefore, it must travel in as straight a line as possible. In other words, a missile from a gun must have a long low curve or trajectory."
"Yes," said the doctor, "I can see that."
"A howitzer, on the other hand," the master explained, "does not require any more velocity than just to carry the high-explosive shell to the point designed. Moreover, in order that their terrible effects may be the more destructive, mortars and howitzers drop their shells from overhead upon the object of fire by lobbing them up in the air with a very high trajectory. A howitzer generally looks as though it were shooting at the moon. It can be placed in a valley and fire over the hill. But, as you can see, its range is restricted. A naval gun throwing an 8-inch shell may have a range of sixteen miles, while the 8-inch howitzer operates best from three or four miles away.
"You see, Doctor," he continued, "if our defenses have been constructed upon the basis of attack from heavy field-guns and light howitzers—whichis the system of most European armies—if our energy has been spent on disappearing cupolas and sunken masonry works which will resist gun-fire, is there not a terrible danger if we are attacked by heavy howitzers, dropping high explosive shells from overhead? To such shells it will make no difference whether the cupolas be raised or lowered.
"If it be true," the old reservist added, his voice rising with a note of presage, "if it be true what is whispered about these new German siege howitzers, then destruction will rain upon the forts of Liége as though the skies were a mouth of flame.
"Perhaps never before, in the history of the world, has so much hung upon the range and power of a modern weapon. We await the eruption of a man-forged volcano which may engulf us all in its fiery lava."
The doctor passed his hand over his face and looked up unconsciously, half in fear as though the doom was on them.
"You make it very ugly," he said.
The master paced on through the late dusk, a glow from the distant gunfire mingling with the faint starlight on his face.
"It matters very little if the End be ugly," he replied, "so long as the road be that of heroism."
The two men walked silently some little space, each following the trend of his own ideas, until, where the road branched off to Chénée, two men joined them.
"Have you any late news?" the master asked.
"The Ninth Regiment has been ordered forward between Fléron and Chaudfontaine," said the older of the newcomers, "and the Fourteenth is to be sent here, to cover Embourg and Boncelles."
"And you—where do you go?"
"To report," the stranger answered; "there will be work enough for us all to do."
"Have you any idea of what numbers we will have to face?"
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe one army corps, maybe two—maybe all Germany. Who knows?"
Darkness closed down upon Liége, the darkness of that August Fourth, such as even that ancient city had never known, a somber pall of shadow pierced with vivid streaks from the flaming fortress guns. Powerful searchlights hunted thecountryside with their malevolent eyes. Death screamed and screeched in the trees. The horrible and cruel work of war hid its unloveliness that first night in the shelter of the woods surrounding the eastern forts of Liége.
The four men soon reached military headquarters. Already casualty cases had begun to arrive and Dr. Mallorbes was promptly assigned to one of the hospitals. The two reservists from Chénée were sent to the shallow trenches defending the approaches to Fort Chaudfontaine, and, at his earnest request, the master was allowed to join his battery at Boncelles.
When, however, the master found himself actually in the fort and under military discipline, much of his pessimism passed away. He fell, naturally, into the fatalism of the soldier, and, as he remarked the extraordinarily powerful machinery and defenses of the fort, said to his neighbor,
"They're counting on our not being ready. But everything here seems up to the minute!"
His fellow-gunner, also an old reservist who had served with the battery before, chuckled as he answered,
"Our silent general has fooled them. GeneralLeman has reached here with the Third Division."
"But the Third was at Diest, eighty miles away, the day before yesterday!" exclaimed the master.
"It is here now, and taking up positions. And the Germans, for all their spies, don't know it. They'll try to rush the forts to-morrow, expecting to find them lightly held, and then we'll pepper them finely."
"How many men does that give us here at Liége?" the master asked.
"About twenty-two thousand."
"And the Germans?"
"Three army corps, probably; a hundred thousand men, at least,[4]and as many more as they like to bring."
"And all confident of breaking through?"
"Quite," said the other, nodding. "There was a young German officer captured yesterday at Visé who jeered at the mere idea of our daring to oppose them.
"'It is the idea of little children that Belgium can resist,' he said. 'In two days we take Liége, in a week we are before Paris. It is all arranged. It is like a time-table. Nothing canprevent victory. Nothing will stop us. If any one hinders, we will roll them into the sea.'"
"Time-tables have been disarranged before now," said the master thoughtfully, "and it is worth remembering that the more rigid is the organization the more hopeless is the confusion when something goes wrong."
"If we can check them here—"
"Then," said the master, "they will never get to Paris."
So, under the plucky but inadequate fire of their forts, the 22,500 Belgians awaited the attack of 120,000 Germans. They knew, those heroes, those martyrs to the ideals of honor, that Germany had untold millions to roll up against them, should their resistance prove to be an obstacle.
It was almost dawn when the first attack began at Evegnée and Barchon. There, the sentries on duty, watching the hillsides opposite to them, saw what seemed to be an undulation of the earth, as though the soil were heaving like the sea. As the morning light cleared the mists away, these waves were seen to be vast bodies of infantry, their iron-gray uniforms indistinguishable against the dawn-lighted grass.
Came a sharp order to fire.
Red mouths of death opened. From trench[5]and fort, rifle-fire ran its crackling harmony to the crash of the 6-inch guns and the insistent rattle of the ear-rasping machine gun. In this hideous repertory of noise, the Hotchkiss machine-guns, used in the forts, and the Berthier guns, used by the infantry and drawn by a dog team, joined their concert of destruction.
It was no discredit to the German soldiers that they fell back. No one, neither General von Emmich, his officers, nor his men, expected to find the Belgian trenches so strongly held. The check was only momentary, however, merely long enough to allow the face of the hills to grow a little brighter, long enough to show clearly to the gallant defenders the tremendous odds they had to face.
The iron-gray masses of the German infantry advanced stolidly into that maw of death. It was unlike all the parade conceptions of battle. There were no flaming colors, no horses curveting around a golden-tasseled standard, no blare of bands, none of the pomp and panoply of war. Only, above the hills which circled the forts, rose theslowly deepening rose of the dawn; only, on the ground below, crept the steady ant-like advance of thousands of men who would be dead before the rising sun had risen.