Читать книгу Hacking Through Belgium - Edmund Dane - Страница 4

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Germany’s rejoinder to Belgium was a declaration of war.

On August 3, German troops crossed the frontier at Dolhain, Francochamps, and Stavelot. Already on the previous day a German army, waiting at Treves, had crossed the Moselle at Wasserbillig, Besselbrieck, and Remich, and in defiance of protests occupied Luxemburg. These were the first military movements in the war.

Driving in the Belgian cavalry outposts along the frontier, the troops from Aix, three army corps under the command of General von Emmich, pushed forward to secure on the one hand a passage over the Meuse before effective opposition could be offered, and on the other to surprise Liége. The 9th corps was detached to seize Visé and the bridge at that place; the 10th marched by way of Verviers with the object of occupying the country to the south and approaching Liége along the level ground between the Vesdre and the Ourthe; the 7th corps followed the direct road from Aix to Liége.

On crossing the frontier, General von Emmich, in command of these troops, distributed to the civilian population a proclamation declaring the pacific intention of the invaders and promising protection for person and property if no hostility was shown. This proclamation, it is evident, had been drawn up and printed in anticipation of Belgian compliance, and no time had been afforded for amending it.

Since the Belgian Government had only on July 31 ordered a partial mobilisation, no considerable force, it was supposed, would be met with south of the Meuse, nor was Liége likely in so short a time to have been made ready for defence. The invading forces consequently brought forward no heavy siege guns. Their equipment in siege artillery was apparently limited to the twelve 5·9 howitzers, four to each army corps, which represented their ordinary field outfit. During the greater part of their advance, the 7th corps met with nothing more formidable than a weak screen of cavalry.

But the Belgian Government had taken prompt and energetic measures. The German troops sent to occupy Visé found on arrival there that, though the Belgians had evacuated the main part of the town lying on the south bank of the river, they had already blown up the bridge, and were prepared from the suburb on the opposite bank seriously to dispute the passage.

The Meuse at this point is fully 300 yards wide. Some sixty yards of the bridge had been destroyed. It was necessary, therefore, for the Germans to construct pontoon bridges, and to cover this operation by shelling the Belgians out of their positions.

From well-covered entrenchments and loop-holed houses on the north bank, however, the Belgians kept up a galling fire, and, although out-weighted in the artillery duel, used their guns to good effect in hampering the German engineers. Repeatedly, when on the point of completion, the pontoon bridges were smashed by Belgian shells. The Belgians successfully contested the passage of the river for three days.

It was when this combat was at its hottest, on August 5, that a detachment of German cavalry was fired upon from the windows of some houses on the south bank. Exasperated by the difficulties met with, and their heavy casualties, the invaders forthwith drove out the inhabitants and fired the town. Many of the men, as they came out of the houses, were indiscriminately shot. The women and children were driven before the German troops with marked barbarity. Visé was reduced to ruins.

On the same day, the village of Argenteau, two miles up the river on the same bank, was similarly destroyed and its population decimated. There can be little doubt that this was an act of terrorism intended at once to conceal the attempt to bridge the river at that point, and to dispirit any defence of Liége.

To the Belgians the three days’ struggle for the passage of the Meuse was of the utmost consequence. It gave General Leman the time necessary to prepare Liége for that resistance which has become, and will remain, one of the most famous episodes in European history.

Intrepid and resourceful, General Leman had thrown himself into Liége with the 3rd division of the Belgian army, and a mixed brigade of such troops as could be hastily got together. This force, of not more than 25,000 men, was reinforced by the civic guard, of the city and district, but it was still far short of the 50,000 troops needed to make up a complete garrison.

Thousands of the civilian inhabitants were willingly employed along the south and south-eastern suburbs in hastily digging trenches, across the sectors between the forts. The troops blew up buildings likely to afford cover for an attack; tore up and blocked the roads; laid wire entanglements; mined the bridges across the Meuse, the Vesdre, and the Ourthe; prepared landmines; placed quick-firing guns at points of vantage, and installed searchlights and field telephones.

All this had to be done with the greatest possible expedition. The completeness and rapidity with which the work was carried out formed a surprising feat of skilful organisation.

When the advanced posts of the 7th German army corps came into touch with the outworks of the defence they found that nothing short of an assault in force would suffice. The prompt and effective fire of the forts within range proved that Liége was ready and on the alert.

The German plan provided for a simultaneous attack from the north, the south-east and the south-west, and if it had been carried out it is difficult to see how the fortress could have resisted even the first onset. The plan, however, miscarried.

In view of the time lost by the 9th corps in forcing a way across the Meuse General von Emmich was obliged to hold off the intended attack by the 7th corps. These troops unsupported were too weak to risk such an operation. The advance, besides, of the 10th corps by way of Verviers had not been so rapid as had been intended. Their march through a stretch of country, hilly and for the most part well wooded, had been actively harassed by a mobile force of Belgians intimately acquainted with the defensive possibilities of the region.

In the meantime, the preparations for resistance were pushed forward night and day, and General von Emmich knew that his task became tougher with every hour that was lost.

He was well aware of the weak spots of the fortress. Of its surrounding ring of twelve forts, six only were large and powerfully armed; the remainder were smaller works. The latter, however, were not regularly alternated with the larger forts. Two of the smaller works, Chaudfontaine and Embourg, were placed close together on the south-west; two others, Lantin and Liers, filled a gap of more than 10 miles across on the north-east; a fifth, Evegnée, was midway between the larger forts of Barchon and Fleron on the south-east. These were the three points selected for the assault. Fort Evegnée covered by the fire of both Barchon and Fleron was the most difficult point of the three.

Needless to say, General Leman, equally well aware of the strong and weak points, had taken his measures accordingly.

Evidently feeling that he could not afford delay, the German commander on August 5 launched the 7th army corps against Fort Evegnée with the object of taking it by storm. The bombardment had begun the day before, following a demand for surrender which had been refused, but the German howitzers were outranged by the heavy ordnance of the larger forts. The fire of the latter, skilfully directed, had proved unexpectedly destructive.

Taking advantage of such cover as had been left by partly demolished buildings, walls, and felled trees, the German infantry at the distance for the final rush closed up into columns of attack and, with the support of their artillery, endeavoured to carry the trenches on both sides of Evegnée with the bayonet. Not only, however, were they enfiladed by the guns of Barchon and Fleron, but they suffered huge losses from land mines.

The tactics adopted by the Belgians were well advised. The troops in the trenches held their fire until the attack fell into difficulties with the entanglements, and then withered the assault by well-aimed volleys.

The onset, nevertheless, was too determined to be shaken. Despite their heavy losses, the Germans negotiated the ditches, and though they were mowed down in hundreds by the machine guns now turned upon them, some gained the crest of the trenches. The earthworks were filled with dying and dead, but the storming parties still advanced over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

It was at this juncture that the Belgian troops received the order for a counter-assault. Rushing from the trenches en masse and in good order, they drove back the storming columns by an irresistible onset. In the pursuit, the German losses were enormous. The first attack had failed. Eight hundred prisoners fell into the hands of the victors, and were sent to Brussels as the first evidence of the national valour.

While that night the 7th army corps, withdrawn beyond the range of the forts, was licking its wounds, the 9th corps, having won the passage of the river below Visé, had advanced to the positions before the forts on the north-east, and on August 6 a second attempt was made to carry the fortress by storm.

The attack was, of course, made from the south-east and from the north-east simultaneously. The sectors between the forts on the north-east had been not less carefully entrenched, and although the attack against fort Evegnée was again repulsed with losses to the storming columns equal to, if not greater than, those inflicted on the preceding day, some troops, apparently of the 9th corps, managed, despite a fierce resistance, to break through the north-east defences. Furious street fighting, however, forced them to retire. It was while covering this perilous retreat that Prince William of Lippe fell at the head of his regiment. The assault from the north-east, though carried out with the greatest determination, broke before an appalling rifle and machine-gun fire, and was turned into defeat by a counter-attack made at the decisive moment.

A critical period in the fighting on this day was when a body of German troops had penetrated as far as the bridge at Wandre. The bridge had been mined, and before the invaders could obtain possession of it, it was blown up. A superior force of Belgians regained the position.

The defence remained intact, and the terrible scenes in the trenches bore testimony at once to its intrepidity and to the resolution of the assault. German dead and wounded lay thick upon the ground up to the very glacis of the forts. An evidence of the boldness of the enemy is that exploit of eight uhlans, two officers, and six privates, who, mistaken for Englishmen, rode during the fighting to the headquarters of General Leman with the object of taking him prisoner. They were killed or captured after a hand to hand struggle in the headquarters’ building with members of the Belgian staff aided by gendarmes.

But though two assaults had failed with heavy loss of life, a third, even more desperate, was made the same night. This time it was delivered from the south-east against fort Evegnée, and from the south-west against forts Chaudfontaine and Embourg. The attack from the latter quarter was carried out by the 10th corps, which had at length come into position. The third assault against fort Evegnée was open and supported by a heavy bombardment. That against Chaudfontaine and Embourg was intended as a surprise. The troops of the 10th corps advanced as silently as possible, hoping to steal up to the trenches under cover of darkness. They waited until the attack upon Evegnée had been going on for more than three hours.

The events of this anxious night in Liége have been admirably described in the vivid narrative of Mr. Gerald Fortescue, the special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, who was an eye-witness of them.

There was a bright moonlight, and the Belgians took advantage of it to strengthen still further their defensive preparations, more especially to the south of the city. They were relieved from the necessity of using lights which would have exposed them to the guns of the enemy. Liége is undoubtedly most open to attack on the south-east and south, and most of all by the flat approach between the Vesdre and the Ourthe. This forms the industrial suburb. The great ironworks, the small-arms and gun factory, the electric lighting works, and the railway depôts in this quarter would make the seizure of it particularly valuable. On the other hand the difficulties of preparing an effective defence were serious. Forts Embourg and Chaudfontaine are here placed close together in view of that fact. A practically complete line of entrenchments, however, closed the enceinte between Forts Fleron and Boncelles. It was, for the defenders, all to the good that these entrenchments and the obstacles in advance of them had been so recently completed that the Germans could have no reliable knowledge of their details.

The city lay without a light, its ancient citadel rising from amid the sombrely moonlit forest of buildings like a great shadow. Only the searchlights playing from the forts gave signs of life and watchfulness. They travelled across the positions where the enemy had placed his artillery; and swept fitfully over the intervals of trampled country, where round ruined buildings and broken walls, in ditches, and amid entanglements multitudes of dead remained unburied.

Of course, the German commander knew that great activity must be going on in the fortress. That activity, if continued, meant ruin to the chance of taking the place by storm.

Half-an-hour before midnight, a furious bombardment against the south-east forts opened. High explosive shells burst with brilliant flashes and sharp uproar on the very glacis of the forts; a storm of shrapnel broke upon the trenches. The forts replied with energy. The city shook under the thunder of the combat.

With little delay, heavy forces of German infantry advanced. The night was favourable to such an attack. It was light enough for the troops to see their way, and yet dark enough to give such cover as greatly to diminish the risk. This was intended to be a bayonet fight. Though the grey-green of the German uniforms was barely distinguishable in such a light, the masses betrayed themselves by their movement. They could be seen from the trenches creeping up for the last rush.

When it was made their columns flung themselves across the intervening ground, and into the ditches with reckless resolution. But the fire of the defenders was as steady as it was destructive. Notwithstanding that the deadly lightning of the machine guns swept away whole ranks, men fought their way to the parapet of the entrenchments. It was brave, but it was vain.

Repeatedly the onslaught was renewed and repulsed. This, however, was not the main attack. At 3 a.m., just before daybreak and when the night was darkest, the assault suddenly opened, against forts Chaudfontaine and Embourg. No artillery announced it. So far as they could, the columns of the 10th army corps crept up silently, feeling their way. They found the defence on the alert. In spite of the rifle fire from the trenches supported by the guns of the forts, they rushed on in close formation. Searchlights of the forts picked them out. They fell by hundreds, but time and again scaled the slope of the entrenchments. There were intervals of furious bayonet fighting. The brunt of the struggle was borne by the 9th and 14th Belgian regiments. The 9th, says Mr. Fortescue, fought like demons. Gun fire alone could not stop such rushes. Only the unshakable bravery of the defending infantry saved the situation, and not until the ditches were filled with their dead and wounded did the Germans break and run.

The fury of the assault may be judged from the fact that the rushes were continued for five successive hours. More than once, as assailants and defenders mingled in fierce hand to hand combats and the trenches at intervals became covered with masses of struggling men, the attack seemed on the point of success. But as daylight broadened the weight of the onset had spent itself. As the beaten foe sullenly withdrew, a vigorous counter-attack from Wandre threw their shaken columns into confusion. The pursuit was energetically pressed. Numbers of fugitives sought safety over the Dutch border.

On the same day, General von Emmich asked for an armistice of twenty-four hours to bury the German dead. It was refused. Liége had won a brief respite.

Refusal of the armistice may seem a harsh measure, but the Belgians doubtless remembered that it was by breach of the conditions of such an armistice that the Prussians in 1866 had overpowered Hanover. Such enemies were beyond the pale of confidence.