10th August 1914 THE STORY OF LIÈGE: DEATH IN HAYSTACKS BRUSSELS, AUG. 8 — In order to piece together in an intelligible fashion the many reports which have been received of the fighting round Liège it is necessary, in the first place, to realise the character of the country over which these amazing operations have taken place. Liège is the Birmingham of Belgium, an industrial city built upon the broad river Meuse, and protected by a girdle of forts placed so as to command the bridges and approaches to the river. These terrible forts, which have exacted so heavy a toll on from the Germans, are like great iron ant hills. The guns project from above, and under them is a smooth metal approach known as the glacis, which the attackers must traverse in the final rush. Guns and forts, however, do not bulk large on the landscape, and on that beautiful autumn evening, August 3, the town of Liège with its spires and its boulevards by no means suggested that a sanguinary encounter would be fought there within a few hours. A Task Pour Rire On that night the advance guard of the Kaiser’s army was approaching Liège from the westward. Stories have been circulated to the effect that the Army was in good spirits for its task, but that is not true. The officers certainly believed that they had before them a task pour rire, as one of the prisoners put it, but with the men it was otherwise. These German soldiers were gloomy and bewildered. They scarcely realised why they were there, they did not wish to be there, and they had heard already terrible tales of the Cossacks who were about to enter their country and devour it. This sullen army, then, came to Liège; to a city of which the defenders were animated by one sentiment, passionate patriotism. Not a soldier in the Belgian forts, or trenches between the forts, who doubted for an instant why he was there; not a man who would have given up his post. Hate and anger and fear for their native land and their wives and children exposed to this terrible danger filled every breast. The morning dawned hot and rather dull, and disclosed the enemy to the defenders of the city. The terror of Europe during ten years, the dreadful war-machine of the Kaiser, so vaunted, so threatening, was at last about to strike. But any natural anxiety passed within a moment or two as the opposing forces began to engage. The Germans attacked along a very wide front stretching north to the small town of Visé and on the south a considerable distance below Liège. The attack opened with a general advance on the forts, covered by artillery fire. But the artillery was not heavy enough — there appear to have been no big siege guns — and the formation of the attacking force was impossible. Attackers’ Close Formation Incredible as it may seem, there appears to be no doubt that these unhappy German soldiers were marched to death shoulder to shoulder. Just as Napoleon won some of his victories by the sudden application of mere mass, so the German generals, who are certainly not of the Napoleonic type, apparently hoped to sate the greed of the guns in the forts by a holocaust of victims. The result of their disastrous policy was terrible. Upon these closely-knit ranks, these men who according to some reports, were being driven forward by their officers — terror dividing itself between discipline and death — the mighty fusillade was opened. “Avenues”, according to a very graphic account, “were opened up in the German front.” Masses of dead began to accumulate in the fields before the forts. “It was death in the haystacks”, a Belgian soldier said in describing the spectacle. Meanwhile, in the deep trenches between the forts, and uniting them, the Belgian troops lay firing on the enemy with their rifles and doing good execution. The forts thundered. Fresh detachment after fresh detachment of the enemy rushed towards the trenches, was broken, shattered — recoiled in horror from the fearful fusillade. Yet still they came, more and more of them, sheep driven ruthlessly to the slaughter according to time-table and without the slightest allowance being made for any possible change of circumstances. It is not, however, to be supposed that the German attack did not inflict severe injury on the Belgian force. On the contrary, large number of these plucky fellows have been killed and wounded; but the point which it is really important to grasp is that this injury was inflicted only at enormous expense to the enemy. Germany lost probably about three soldiers for every one which Belgium lost. On The Slopes Towards the afternoon the battle became fiercer all along the lines. At one of the forts the Germans succeeded in gaining a footing on the slopes under the great guns, where they believed themselves safe from slaughter. “It would seem to be actually the case,” an officer who recounted the story declared, “that they did not remember or did not know that machine guns were awaiting them, after they passed from the zone of fire of the great guns. In a moment the slopes were swept clean; they ran with blood; the piles of dead grew higher and higher”. During all this time the men in the trenches were impatient to be up and at the enemy. Much of the rifle firing seems actually to have taken place at about 50 yards’ range; but this from the Belgian point of view was not near enough. It was bayonet work which they desired. And they had their desire! Bayonet charges were made very frequently throughout the day. Amazing as it may sound, it is certain the case that these bayonet charges more than anything else struck terror into the German heart. At the sight of the steel — and the men behind it — the troops of the Kaiser in very many instances turned and ran. in other cases they held up their hands and surrendered, and a large number of prisoners were taken. Nevertheless the Belgians with splendid magnanimity paid tribute to the courage of these unhappy Germans. It is not courage but a good cause and good leadership which is lacking. The days of the automatic machine army are dead.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 08:32:33 +0000
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