THE TRENCH DAYS: The Collected War Tales of William Le Queux (WW1 Adventure Sagas, Espionage Thrillers & Action Classics). William Le Queux

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      It was a proclamation which was now posted everywhere, not only in the districts occupied by the Germans, but it had also been secretly affixed to walls by spies in Liège, Louvain, Charleroi, and even in Brussels itself. By it, the Germans were hoping to secure the allegiance of the Belgian people.

      While this proclamation expressed regret that the German troops found themselves obliged to cross the Belgian frontier, it pointed out that only necessity compelled them to do so because French officers had violated Belgian territory by crossing from France into Germany by motor-cars. A poor excuse surely for the burning and sacking of all those little undefended frontier towns — Visé, Argenteau, Soumagne, Poulseur, and the rest.

      “Belgians?” it went on. “It is our great desire that there may still be means to avoid a combat between two peoples who were friends until now, and were formerly even allies. Remember the glorious day of Waterloo, where fought the German armies who contributed to found and establish the independence and prosperity of your country.

      “But we must have an open road. Any destruction of bridges, tunnels, or railways must be regarded as hostile actions. Belgians, it is for you to choose!

      “I hope, then, that the German army of the Meuse will not be compelled to wage war with you. An open way to attack those who wish to attack us: that is all we desire.

      “I give these formal guarantees to the Belgian population: that it will suffer nothing from the horrors of war; that we will pay in gold for the provisions that we find necessary to take from your country; that our soldiers will show themselves to be the best friends of a people for whom we cherish the highest esteem and the greatest sympathy.

      “By your wisdom and patriotism, which we fully recognise, your country will be spared the horrors of war.

      “General Commander-In-Chief of the Army of the Meuse, —

      “Von Emmich.”

      And yet the poor inhabitants of Visé had been outraged and shot by the Kaiser’s unrestrained savages! In all those villages lying across the rippling Ourthe and the broad Meuse, the treatment of the inoffensive civilians had been ruthless and merciless. Removal from the face of the earth — a favourite phrase of the Germans themselves — was, from the first, the invader’s idea of how best to deal with the unarmed, unoffending villagers, the only crime of whose hard-working people was that they had fallen in the path of the blasphemous Prussian militarism.

      A private who was reading the proclamation remarked to Edmond:

      “What trickery — eh? I hear that the Uhlans yesterday shot the Burgomaster of Esneux, over yonder, and propped his body against a wall all day as a warning — because he had carried a revolver. Thirty men were afterwards shot in the Place without any trial whatever, and women and children were outraged and bayoneted and their bodies flung into the river. Our women, they say, are being treated infamously, and all the possessions of the villagers are being destroyed. May God curse those Germans!”

      “Yes,” replied the sous-officier, and as he turned away with a sigh a red light behind the hill gradually appeared, and then quickly grew brighter. “There is another village on fire, over there. I suppose the Uhlans will drive our people to reprisals so that excuse for further cruelty may be found.”

      “And yet they post up this proclamation!” cried the man in Flemish, and with the point of his bayonet he succeeded in tearing holes in the notice, and eventually mutilated and obliterated it, saying:

      “Death to the Alboches! Death to the Kaiser’s murderers and brigands! After all, the Emperor who makes war upon women and children is only a brigand, just like those in Sicily. Surely a prize should be offered for his head!”

      Just as the man spoke they both saw, in the distance, sudden little red flashes, which told that the troops were vomiting death upon the enemy again, so they dashed back to their ditch, while in the trees above them could already be heard the “phit” of the enemy’s bullets as they struck the branches.

      Ere a few moments the order was given to fire, and quickly Edmond’s pom-pom again began its regular spitting of death, whilst on the flank their invisible batteries also opened fire with destructive shrapnel.

      The night grew darker, and the moon became, for a time, obscured behind a bank of swiftly-drifting cloud. In the distance the fires lit up the battle scene with a red, sinister glare, while, far away upon the hills on the right, could be seen moving masses of Belgian soldiers, a Dantean vision of hell, and whilst the men lay in their shallow ditch firing away with monotonous regularity, bullets were whistling past, striking the trees, or flattening themselves with muffled noise in the earth.

      The fight was a hot one. In front were the millions of the Kaiser, oncoming like a great irresistible tide, yet the gallant little Belgian army, which for years had been jeered at by every Frenchman, soldier or civilian, as a comic-opera force, were defending their country in a manner so patriotic and desperate that it held the whole world in surprise.

      Confronted by a big and arrogant Empire, which for years had laid its cunningly-devised plots for their destruction, the Belgian army stood undaunted, and meant to strive on and defend their soil until France and Great Britain could come to their aid.

      That the Germans should never take Belgium had been resolved in the hearts of all King Albert’s subjects, while His Majesty himself, in the uniform of a private of infantry, was daily in the trenches, and often spoke quiet, homely words of encouragement to private and general alike. The whole army knew how, two days before, he had been in the trenches at Herstal, and had given private soldiers cigarettes with his own hands. In some cases he had not, at first, been recognised, dressed in a shabby, dusty uniform, just like themselves.

      But he was a king — a king eventually without a country — and his name will for ever go down in history as a wonderful example of self-denial, personal bravery, and of human sympathy with his crushed and desolated nation.

      Suddenly, while Edmond was commanding his gun, a shrapnel burst just behind him. A bullet struck his water-bottle, and a splinter passing through it the water ran out down his leg. But at the same moment another bullet struck in the head a man to whom he was giving an order and he fell heavily forward on his face — dead.

      In a moment the place seemed swept by lead. Two or three shells fell in quick succession, the enemy having apparently advanced to a long copse just across the river-bank.

      “The brutes have occupied Esneux again, I believe,” remarked a man close by.

      Away on the crest of one of the hills a small but very bright light showed. It was flashing in Morse code. A signaller quite near read it aloud.

      “The enemy!” he shouted. “The message is in German!”

      Yet they still plugged away with their rifles, undaunted at the enemy’s advance. The forts were speaking more frequently now, and continually the very earth trembled beneath the great crashes of modern artillery of the Brailmont system of defence.

      Along that dark line of low hills was seen constant flashing in the blackness; storm clouds had arisen to obscure the moon, and rain was now threatening. The whole sky was now a deep, angry red, with patches of crimson heightening and dying down — the reflections of the inferno of war. The noise was deafening, and on every hand the gallant defenders were sustaining heavy losses.

      Of a sudden, before indeed they were aware of it, the whole edge of the wood became lit up by an intense white brilliance, so dazzling that one could СКАЧАТЬ