History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0469/04693.txt

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$Title{True Stories Of The Great War
Stories Of The War Photographers In Belgium}
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$Author{Williams, Albert Rhys}
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$Subject{war
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$Date{1917}
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Title:       True Stories Of The Great War
Book:        Stories Of The War Photographers In Belgium
Author:      Williams, Albert Rhys
Date:        1917
Translation: Benington, Arthur

Stories Of The War Photographers In Belgium

I - Story Of An American In Ghent

An American at the Battlefront

Told by Albert Rhys Williams, War Correspondent

[This narrator tells of his experiences with the spy hunters of Belgium.  He
was swept into the war-stricken country where he was arrested by the Germans,
sweating under the German third degree, spending a fearful night on a prison
floor, suffering with his fellow prisoners the torments of a trial as a spy in
a German military court in Brussels, and finally securing his liberty.  He has
collected his experiences in a volume under title "In the Claws of the German
Eagle," thus preserving in book form his remarkable articles which were first
published in The Outlook.]

[Footnote *: All numerals relate to stories herein told - not to chapters
from original sources.]

     In the last days of September, the Belgians moving in and through
Ghent in their rainbow-colored costumes, gave to the city a distinctively
holiday touch.  The clatter of cavalry hoofs and the throb of racing
motors rose above the voices of the mobs that surged along the streets.

     Service was normal in the cafes.  To the accompaniment of music and
clinking glasses the dress-suited waiter served me a five-course lunch for
two francs.  It was uncanny to see this blaze of life while the city sat
under the shadow of a grave disaster.  At any moment the gray German tide
might break out of Brussels and pour its turbid flood of soldiers through
these very streets.  Even now a Taube hovered in the sky, and from the
skirmish-line an occasional ambulance rumbled in with its crimsoned load.

     I chanced into Gambrinus' cafe and was lost in the babbling sea of
French and Flemish.  Above the melee of sounds, however, I caught a
gladdening bit of English.  Turning about, I espied a little group of men
whose plain clothes stood out in contrast to the colored uniforms of
officers and soldiers crowded into the cafe.  Wearied of my efforts at
conversing in a foreign tongue, I went over and said:

     "Do you really speak English?"

     "Well, rather!" answered the one who seemed to act as leader of the
group.  "We are the only ones now and it will be scarcer still around here
in a few days."

     "Why?" I asked.

     "Because Ghent will be in German hands."

     This brought an emphatic denial from one of his confreres who
insisted that the Germans had already reached the end of their rope.  A
certain correspondent, joining in the argument, came in for a deal of
banter for taking the war de luxe in a good hotel far from the front.

     "What do you know about the war?" they twitted him.  "You've pumped
all your best stories out of the refugees ten miles from the front, after
priming them with a glass of beer."

     There were a group of young war-photographers to whom danger was a
magnet.  Though none of them had yet reached the age of thirty, they had
seen service in all the stirring events of Europe and even around the
globe.  Where the clouds lowered and the seas tossed, there they flocked.
Like stormy petrels they rushed to the center of the swirling world.  That
was their element.  A free-lance, a representative of the Northcliffe
press, and two movie-men comprised this little group and made an island of
English amidst the general babel.

     Like most men who have seen much of the world, they had ceased to be
cynics.  When I came to them out of the rain, carrying no other
introduction than a dripping overcoat, they welcomed me into their company
and whiled away the evening with tales of the Balkan wars.

     They were in high spirits over their exploits of the previous day,
when the Germans, withdrawing from Melle on the outskirts of the city, had
left a long row of cottages still burning.  As the enemy troops pulled out
the further end of the street, the movie men came in at the other and
caught the pictures of the still blazing houses.  We went down to view
them on the screen.  To the gentle throbbing of drums and piano, the
citizens of Ghent viewed the unique spectacle of their own suburbs going
up in smoke.

     At the end of the show they invited me to fill out their automobile
on the morrow.  Nearly every other motor had been commandeered by the
authorities for the "Service Militaire" and bore on the front the letters
"S. M." Our car was by no means in the blue-ribbon class.  It had a
hesitating disposition and the authorities, regarding it as more of a
liability than an asset, passed it over.

     But the correspondents counted it a great stroke of fortune to have
any car at all; and, that they might continue to have it, they kept it at
night carefully locked in a room in the hotel.  They had their chauffeur
under like supervision.  He was one of their kind, and with the cunning of
a diplomat obtained the permit to buy petrol, most precious of all
treasures in the field of war.  Indeed, gasoline, along with courage and
discipline, completed the trinity of success in the military mind.

II - Stories Of The War Photographers In Belgium

     With the British flag flying at the front, we sped away next morning
on the road to Termonde.  At Melle we came upon the blazing cottages we
had seen pictured the night before.  Here we encountered a roving band of
Belgian soldiers who were in a free and careless mood and evinced a ready
willingness to put themselves at our disposal.  Under the command of the
photographers, they charged across the fields with fixed bayonets,
wriggled up through the grass, or, standing behind the trenches, blazed
away with their guns at an imaginary enemy.  They did some good acting,
grim and serious as death.  All except one.

     This youth couldn't suppress his sense of humor.  He could not, or
would not, keep from laughing, even when he was supposed to be blowing the
head off a Boche.  He was properly disciplined and put out of the game,
and we went on with our manoeuvers to the accompaniment of the clicking
cameras until the photographers had gathered in a fine lot of realistic
fighting-line pictures.

     One of the photographers sat stolidly in the automobile smoking his
cigarette while the others were reaping their harvest.

     "Why don't you take these too?" I asked.

     "Oh," he replied, "I've been sending in so much of that stuff that I
just got a telegram from my paper saying, 'Pension off that Belgian
regiment which is doing stunts in the trenches.'"

     While his little army rested from their manoeuvers the
Director-in-Chief turned to me and said:

     "Wouldn't you like to have a photograph of yourself in these
war-surroundings, just to take home as a souvenir?"

     That appealed to me.  After rejecting some commonplace suggestions,
he exclaimed: "I have it.  Shot as a German Spy.  There's the wall to
stand up against; and we'll pick a crack firing-squad out of these
Belgians.  A little bit of all right, eh?"

     I acquiesced in the plan and was led over to the wall while a
movie-man whipped out a handkerchief and tied it over my eyes.  The
director then took a firing squad in hand.  He had but recently witnessed
the execution of a spy where he had almost burst with a desire to
photograph the scene.  It had been excruciating torture to restrain
himself.  But the experience had made him fell conversant with the
etiquette of shooting a spy, as it was being done amongst the very best
firing-squads.  He made it now stand him in good stead.

     "Aim right across the bandage," the director coached them.  I could
hear one of the soldiers laughing excitedly as he was warming up to the
rehearsal.  It occurred to me that I was reposing a lot of confidence in a
stray band of soldiers.  Some one of those Belgians, gifted with a lively
imagination, might get carried away with the suggestion and act as if I
really were a German spy.

     "Shoot the blooming blighter in the eye," said one movie man
playfully.

     "Bally good idea!" exclaimed the other one approvingly, while one
eager actor realistically clicked his rifle-hammer.  That was altogether
too much.  I tore the bandage from my eyes, exclaiming:

     "It would be a bally good idea to take those cartridges out first."
Some fellow might think his cartridge was blank or try to fire wild, just
as a joke in order to see me jump.  I wasn't going to take any risk and
flatly refused to play my part until the cartridges were ejected.  Even
when the bandage was readjusted "Didn't-know-it-was-loaded" stories still
were haunting me.  In a moment, however, it was over and I was promised my
picture within a fortnight.

     A week later I picked up the London Daily Mirror from a news-stand.
It had the caption:

     Belgian Soldiers Shoot A German Spy Caught At Termonde . . . Picture

     I opened up the paper and what was my surprise to see a big spread
picture of myself, lined up against that row of Melle cottages and being
shot for the delectation of the British public.  There is the same long
raincoat that runs as a motif through all the other pictures.  Underneath
it were the words:

     "The Belgians have a short, sharp method of dealing with the Kaiser's
rat-hole spies.  This one was caught near Termonde and, after being
blindfolded, the firing-squad soon put an end to his inglorious career."

     One would not call it fame exactly, even though I played the
star-role.  But it is a source of some satisfaction to have helped a royal
lot of fellows to a first-class scoop.  As the "authentic spy-picture of
the war," it has had a broadcast circulation.  I have seen it in
publications ranging all the way from The Police Gazette to Collier's
Photographic History of the European War.  In a university club I once
chanced upon a group gathered around this identical picture.  They were
discussing the psychology of this "poor devil" in the moments before he
was shot.  It was a further source of satisfaction to step in and
arbitrarily contradict all their conclusions and, having shown them how
totally mistaken they were, proceed to tell them exactly how the victim
felt.  This high-handed manner nettled one fellow terribly:

     "Not so arbitrary, my friend!" he said.  "You haven't any right to be
so devilish cock-sure."

     "Haven't I?" I replied.  "Who has any better right?  I happen to be
that identical man!"

     But that little episode has been of real value to me.  It is said
that if one goes through the motions he gets the emotions.  I believe that
I have an inkling of how a man feels when he momentarily expects a volley
of cold lead to turn his skull into a sieve.

III - How Camera Men Risk Their Lives

     Most of the pictures which the public casually gazes on have been
secured at a price - and a large one, too.  The names of these men who go
to the front with cameras, rather than with rifles or pens, are generally
unknown.  They are rarely found beneath the pictures, yet where would be
our vivid impression of courage in daring and of skill in doing, of
cunning strategy upon the field of battle, of wounded soldiers sacrificing
for their comrades, if we had no pictures?  A few pictures are faked, but
behind most pictures there is another tale of daring and of strategy, and
that is the tale concerning the man who took it.  That very day thrice
these same men risked their lives.

     The apparatus loaded in the car, we were off again.  Past a few
barricades of paving-stones and wagons, past the burned houses which
marked the place where the Germans had come within five miles of Ghent, we
encountered some uniformed Belgians who looked quite as dismal and
dispirited as the fog which hung above the fields.  They were the famous
Guarde Civique of Belgium.  Our Union Jack, flapping in the wind, was very
likely quite the most thrilling spectacle they had seen in a week, and
they hailed it with a cheer and a cry of "Vive l'Angleterre!" (Long live
England!) The Guarde Civique had a rather inglorious time of it.
Wearisomely in their wearisome-looking uniform, they stood for hours on
their guns or marched and counter-marched in dreary patrolling, often
doomed not even to scent the battle from afar off.

     Whenever we were called to a halt for the examination of our
passports, these men crowded around and begged for newspapers.  We held up
our stock, and they would clamor for the ones with pictures.  The English
text was unintelligible to most of them, but the pictures they could
understand, and they bore them away to enjoy the sight of other soldiers
fighting, even if they themselves were denied that excitement.  Our
question to them was always the same, "Where are the Germans?"

     Out of the conflicting reports it was hard to tell whether the
Germans were heading this way or not.  That they were expected was shown
by the sign-posts whose directions had just been obliterated by fresh
paint - a rather futile operation, because the Germans had better maps and
plans of the region than the Belgians themselves, maps which showed every
by-path, well and barn.  The chauffeur's brother had been shot in his car
by the Germans but a week before, and he didn't relish the idea of thus
flaunting the enemy's flag along a road where some German scouting party
might appear at any moment.  The Union Jack had done good service in
getting us easy passage so far, but the driver was not keen for going
further with it.

     It was proposed to turn the car around and back it down the road, as
had been done the previous day.  Thus the car would be headed in the home
direction, and at sight of the dreaded uniform we could make a quick leap
for safety.  At this juncture, however, I produced a small Stars and
Stripes, which the chauffeur hailed with delight, and we continued our
journey now under the aegis of a neutral flag.

     It might have secured temporary safety, but only temporary; for if
the Englishmen with only British passports had fallen into the hands of
the Germans, like their unfortunate kinsmen who did venture too far into
the war zone, they, too, would have had a chance to cool their ardor in
some detention-camp of Germany.  This cheerful prospect was in the mind of
these men, for, when we espied coming around a distant corner two
gray-looking men on horseback, they turned white as the chauffeur cried,
"Uhlans!"

     It is a question whether the car or our hearts came to a dead
standstill first.  Our shock was unnecessary.  They proved to be Belgians,
and assured us that the road was clear all the way to Termonde; and,
except for an occasional peasant tilling his fields, the country-side was
quite deserted until at Grembergen we came upon an unending procession of
refugees streaming down the road.  They were all coming out of Termonde.
Termonde, after being taken and retaken, bombarded and burned, was for the
moment neutral territory.  A Belgian commandant had allowed the refugees
that morning to return and gather what they might from among the ruins.

     In the early morning, then, they had gone into the city, and now at
high noon they were pouring out, a great procession of the dispossessed.
They came tracking their way to where - God only knows.  All they knew was
that in their hearts was set the fear of Uhlans, and in the sky the smoke
and flames of their burning homesteads.  They came laden with their lares
and penates, - mainly dogs, feather beds, and crayon portraits of their
ancestors.

IV - When Lens Has A Heart

     Women came carrying on their heads packs which looked like their
entire household paraphernalia.  The men were more unassuming, and, as a
rule, carried a package considerably lighter and comporting more with
their superior masculine dignity.  I recall one little woman in
particular.  She was bearing a burden heavy enough to send a strong
American athlete staggering down to the ground, while at her side
majestically marched her faithful knight, bearing a bird-cage, and there
wasn't any bird in it, either.

     Nothing could be more mirth-provoking than that sight; yet, strangely
enough, the most tear-compelling memory of the war is connected with
another bird-cage.  Two children rummaging through their ruined home dug
it out of the debris.  In it was their little pet canary.  While fire and
smoke rolled through the house it had beat its wings against the bars in
vain.  Its prison had become its tomb.  Its feathers were but slightly
singed, yet it was dead with that pathetic finality which attaches itself
to only a dead bird - its silver songs and flutterings, once the delight
of the children, now stilled forever.

     The photographers had long looked for what they termed a first-class
sob-picture.  Here it was par excellence.  The larger child stood stroking
the feathers of her pet and murmuring over and over "Poor Annette," "Poor
Annette!" Then the smaller one snuggling the limp little thing against her
neck wept inconsolably.

     Instead of seizing their opportunity, the movie man was clearing his
throat while the free lance was busy on what he said was a cinder in his
eye.  Yet this very man had brought back from the Balkan War of 1907 a
prime collection of horrors; corpses thrown into the death-cart with arms
and legs sticking out like so much stubble; the death-cart creeping away
with its ghastly load; and the dumping together of bodies of men and
beasts into a pit to be eaten by the lime.  This man who had gone through
all this with good nerve was now touched to tears by two children crying
over their pet canary.  There are some things that are too much for the
heart of even a war-photographer.

     To give the whole exodus the right tragic setting, one is tempted to
write that tears were streaming down all the faces of the refugees, but on
the contrary, indeed, most of them carried a smile and a pipe, and trudged
stolidly along, much as though bound for a fair.  Some of our pictures
show laughing refugees.  That may not be fair, for man is so constituted
that the muscles of his face automatically relax to the click of the
camera.  But as I recall that pitiful procession, there was in it very
little outward expression of sorrow.

     Undoubtedly there was sadness enough in all their hearts, but people
in Europe have learned to live on short rations; they rarely indulge in
luxuries like weeping, but bear the most unwonted afflictions as though
they were the ordinary fortunes of life.  War has set a new standard for
grief.  So these victims passed along the road, but not before the record
of their passing was etched for ever on our moving-picture films.  The
coming generation will not have to reconstruct the scene from the colored
accounts of the journalist, but with their own eyes they can see the
hegira of the homeless as it really was.

     The resignation of the peasant in the face of the great calamity was
a continual source of amazement to us.  Zola in "Le Debacle" puts into his
picture of the battle of Sedan an old peasant plowing on his farm in the
valley.  While shells go screaming overhead he placidly drives his old
white horse through the accustomed furrows.  One naturally presumed that
this was a dramatic touch of the great novelist.  But similar incidents we
saw in this Great War over and over again.

V - A Thousand Horses Strain At Their Bridles

     We were with Consul Van Hee one morning early before the clinging
veil of sleep had lifted from our spirits or the mists from the low-lying
meadows.  Without warning our car shot through a bank of fog into a
spectacle of mediaeval splendor - a veritable Field of the Cloth of Gold,
spread out on the green plains of Flanders.

     A thousand horses strained at their bridles while their thousand
riders in great fur busbies loomed up almost like giants.  A thousand
pennons stirred in the morning air while the sun burning through the mists
glinted on the tips of as many lances.  The crack Belgian cavalry
divisions had been gathered here just behind the firinglines in readiness
for a sortie; the Lancers in their cherry and green and the Guides in
their blue and gold making a blaze of color.

     It was as if in a trance we had been carried back to a tourney of
ancient chivalry - this was before privations and the new drab uniforms
had taken all glamor out of the war.  As we gazed upon the glittering
spectacle the order from the commander came to us:

     "Back, back out of danger!"

     "Forward!" was the charge to the Lancers.

     The field-guns rumbled into line and each rider unslung his carbine.
Putting spurs to the horses, the whole line rode past saluting our Stars
and Stripes with a "Vive L'Amerique." Bringing up the rear two cassocked
priests served to give this pageantry a touch of prophetic grimness.

     And yet as the cavalcade swept across the fields thrilling us with
its color and its action, the nearby peasants went on spreading fertilizer
quite as calm and unconcerned as we were exhilarated.

     "Stupid," "Clods," "Souls of oxen," we commented, yet a protagonist
of the peasant might point out that it was perhaps as noble and certainly
quite as useful to be held by a passion for the soil as to be caught by
the glamor of men riding out to slaughter.  And Zola puts this in the mind
of his peasants.

     "Why should I lose a day?  Soldiers must fight, but folks must live.
It is for me to keep the corn growing."

     Deep down into the soil the peasant strikes his roots.  Urban people
can never comprehend when these roots are cut away how hopelessly lost and
adrift this European peasant in particular becomes.  Wicked as the Great
War has seemed to us in its bearing down upon these innocent folks, yet we
can never understand the cruelty that they have suffered in being uprooted
from the land and sent forth to become beggars and wanderers upon the
highroads of the world.