For nearly half an hour Edmond had been plugging away with his men, when of a sudden a machine-gun section ran up close to them. Room was made in the trench, and the gun, carried in parts by half a dozen st.u.r.dy soldiers, was quickly a.s.sembled.
Then, the belt of cartridges having been adjusted, at the word of command the terrible engine of destruction suddenly spat its hail of death across the river.
The _onder-officier_ with the gun laughed gaily to Edmond, saying in Flemish:
"Our friends yonder will not like this--eh?"
"_Oy hebt gelyk_," (you are right), laughed Edmond. "But see over there! What is that smoke; there--away to the left?"
"That is Vise," was the reply, shouted above the rattle of the machine-gun. "The enemy must have set the place on fire--the brutes!
Look?"
And as both watched they saw a great column of black smoke rising slowly into the clear, cloudless sky.
"If they cross at the bridge there they will have the road open to them to Tongres and St Trond--the main road to Brussels. I suppose we are defending it," said the _onder-officier_, a man with a red moustache.
"_Ja_! Let"s hope so," said Edmond, raising his Mauser rifle mechanically again, and discharging the five cartridges from its magazine.
At that instant the trench was suddenly swept by a perfect hail of lead from across the river, while from over the heights beyond came a Taube aeroplane, which noisily buzzed as it rose higher and higher, and then, out of range, made a complete circle, in order to reconnoitre the defenders" position. Dozens of men in the trenches raised their rifles and fired at it. But it had already risen high out of harm"s way, and gaily it circled round and round over the line of the Meuse, noting all the Belgian positions on the north bank of the river, and signalling to the enemy from time to time.
The spot where Edmond was stationed with his regiment was situated about eight miles from Liege, and one from Vise. Just to his right was a bridge, which the Belgians had not destroyed, and which the enemy were now protecting from destruction by means peculiar to the "blonde beasts"
of the Kaiser.
Placed upon it were two big furniture-vans, which had been hastily daubed in the Belgian colours--red, black, and yellow. And these were filled with Belgian soldiers, prisoners in German hands. By adopting these dastardly methods, they knew that the defenders would not sh.e.l.l the bridge and destroy it.
Edmond"s regiment did not present any picture of uniformity. Some men about him were dressed in the military fashion of thirty years ago--caps with enormous peaks, and wide-flowing capes covering green and yellow uniforms--while others, including himself, were in the dark-green modern uniform which has lately been adopted, and had been served out to those who had hurriedly rejoined the colours. While the enemy were all in the new service kit of greenish-grey cloth, which at a distance was exceedingly difficult to distinguish--with heavy leather boots reaching half-way up their calves--the Belgians marched in garments of all colours, from the sombre black of the carabineers to the bright amaranthe and green of the Guides.
In war some curious sights are seen in the trenches. Close to where Valentin was crouching there knelt a smart lancer, with a basket containing carrier-pigeons strapped to his back like a knapsack. Amid the roar and din the poor birds fluttered about restlessly inside their _cage_, eager to escape to their homes. But if the brave little Belgian nation lacked uniforms and accoutrements, it never lacked courage. All was a hubbub of hope, and a talk of victory.
"_A bas les Alboches_!"
"_Vive la guerre_!" had been shouted from Ostend to Givet, and the spirits of the nation--soldiers and civilians alike--were of the highest, for now that England had declared war, Belgium was fighting the battles of two great nations, France and Britain.
Both French and British soldiers would soon come to their aid, if they could only hold out.
"They will never silence our forts at Liege," declared the lancer with the pigeons. But just as he uttered the words, Edmond Valentin heard a sound like the shrill yell of a small dog in the distance, and the next second there occurred near them a terrific explosion.
The deadly German artillery were getting the range!
Again and again came the familiar yell, followed by the inevitable crash. A dozen or so men were lying about him, shattered, dead, or dying.
But the pom-pom continued to deal death, slackening only now and then when a fresh belt was adjusted.
Adding to the roar of heavy guns, and quite close to them, lay the hidden fort of Pontisse, while forts Barchon, Evegnee, and Fleron, on the heists across the river, were thundering and dealing death in the enemy"s ranks. Behind them, to the left, lay three other forts--Liers, Lanlin, and Loncin--defending the city of Liege, and forming a further portion of the ring.
Time after time their huge guns roared, and the very earth quaked. Time after time the enemy across the river were decimated by the terrible fire.
Then, every now and then, the ear was deafened by the loud crackling of musketry, which sounded like the loading of granite blocks into a cart.
They were of two pitches, the deeper from the rifles of the infantry, and the sharper from the cavalry carbines. And above it all--above the constant explosions of shrapnel--sounded the regular pom-pom-pom-pom, steady as the tick of a rapid clockwork motor--adding to the deadly fire now sweeping the valley for nearly twenty miles.
Edmond, quite cool and determined, lay there firing away in the direction of the little puffs of grey smoke, which were hardly distinguishable behind the distant railway line. It was his first experience of being under fire, and after the first few minutes he grew quite unconcerned, even though he saw that many of his comrades had, alas! been bowled over. The primeval fury of the male beast bent on fighting, which seizes every man who is called upon to defend his life, had also seized him.
"They say that the French will be at Liege to-night," remarked the _onder-officier_ with the red moustache, in charge of the machine-gun.
"If they are, we will teach those German brutes a lesson. We will--"
Next instant he reeled and fell forward upon his face. A bullet entering his jaw had pa.s.sed through his head, carrying with it a large piece of his skull. Death had been instantaneous. With hope of victory upon his lips the brave fellow had pa.s.sed, in a single second, into that land which lies beyond the human ken.
The four Cha.s.seurs serving the gun stopped and turned him over, but saw at once that he no longer lived.
A few seconds later Edmond heard sharp words of command from his lieutenant, who had crawled along to him, and in obedience he ceased firing his Mauser, took the dead man"s place and a.s.sumed charge of the machine-gun, which, within another half-minute, was continuing its work, while the body of the _onder-officier_ was dragged aside.
"Curse the grey devils! They shall pay for that!" cried one of the men fiercely.
Just then, however, there came a lull in the firing. The sh.e.l.ls had ceased, and the enemy was slackening in his attack all along the line.
Was the fight subsiding?
A dull, distant roar was heard from Boncelles, where the steel cupolas were rising, and the big guns hurling death at the grey hordes of the Kaiser, and then disappearing. Then silence.
Suddenly another loud crackling of rifles, and again Edmond"s pom-pom recommenced its rapid rhythmic rattle.
More Mausers crackling, the shrill yell of a sh.e.l.l pa.s.sing over them, and then a blood-red explosion some distance behind them.
Another shouted word of command, and the whole line of rifles were again discharged. It seemed almost as a signal for the fight to recommence, for next moment the attack was renewed with redoubled vigour.
The short, sharp reports of the enemy"s artillery reverberated along the valley, and sh.e.l.ls were now exploding unpleasantly near the trenches.
"I thought they had had enough," growled one of the men to Edmond, in French, "but it seems they haven"t. _Bien_, we will show the Kaiser and his brigands that we mean defiance. See, over there, m"sieur! They are burning Vise, and Argenteau too! I lived in Vise when a boy. My sister is there now--unless she has escaped into Holland. I pray to G.o.d the poor girl has done so."
"I sincerely hope she has," Edmond declared. "It surely is no place for a woman down yonder."
"_Ah, mon vieux_, they"ve been killing women and children, the savages,"
growled another man with set teeth, as he took out a fresh belt of cartridges. "I heard so as we came along from Liege. But I can"t believe it to be true. The Germans are surely not savages, but a cultured race."
"Culture?" snapped the first man, a somewhat rough, uncouth fellow, plainly of the peasant cla.s.s. "If they were cultured, as it is said, they would not burn those undefended villages yonder, and ma.s.sacre the inhabitants as they are doing. It is horrible--awful!"
"Ah, but the ma.s.sacres are only hearsay," Edmond remarked.
"No. One man, an eye-witness, has escaped from Vise. He swam the river, told the terrible truth, and the report was telephoned this morning to Brussels. I overheard our captain tell the major as we were on the march here. The Germans have shot down dozens of men and women, and even little children. Some of them have been deliberately burned alive in their homes. That, m"sieur, is the way Germany makes war! But surely that is not war--it is savage butchery, m"sieur. Culture, bah!"
And the man bent again to his gun.
Could those brave Belgians have seen what was, at that moment, happening in those unoffending villages about them, they would surely have left their trenches and, even regardless of the pitiless fire of the enemy, dashed to the rescue of the poor unoffending inhabitants. On that warm, bright sunlit August day, whole villages were being put to the sword by the ruthless soldiery of the Kaiser, upon the flimsy pretext that the villagers, being non-combatants, had fired upon the troops. Yet the truth came out that such ma.s.sacres of the inhabitants were actually part of the general plan of campaign. The Kaiser had ordered those cold-blooded atrocities for purely strategical considerations. They were not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of marauding and buccaneering soldiers, but were ordered by Imperial command.
Over there, among those green hillsides sloping to the river, the Teutonic wave had burst its bounds. Fiendish tortures were being inflicted on helpless old men, women, and children. Peaceful villagers were hanged to trees, sometimes stark naked, and their bodies riddled by bullets. Innocent children were savagely sabred by German officers who, only a week before, were strutting in civilised drawing-rooms, the scented and elegant darlings of the ladies of Berlin.
At that hour, while Edmond Valentin crouched beside his newly acquired pom-pom, pouring a deadly fire away across the river, there were being enacted scenes of outrage, plunder, and ma.s.sacre too terrible even to bear description--scenes in which blood-guilty ruffians of the great War Lord of Germany performed their grim and terrible work, a work so dastardly and inhuman as to have no parallel; atrocious acts actually ordered by the officers themselves, and which would for ever be handed down in history as an indelible blot upon the escutcheon of those blasphemous and barbarous brigands who loved to call their country the Fatherland.
That strip of green, smiling, undulating country between the German frontier and the Meuse, dotted by small prosperous villages, many of them filled by factory-hands and work-people, was that day swept by the fierce fiery hurricane of war, and so suddenly had it all come upon them that most of the people had not had time to realise what war meant ere they found the swaggering Uhlans clattering up the streets, shouting at and insulting the inhabitants, shooting down men, women, and children, and laughing heartily at the panic which their appearance caused.