The Tervaete Charge By Artillery Captain M—— C——
(In memory of Major Count Henri d'Oultremont.)
Refusing stubbornly to budge from the Yser, the Belgian army was struggling desperately with the enemy, making a frantic effort to hold on to the last shred of its beloved country. The valiant little army had been asked to hold out for forty-eight hours in the gigantic and unequal combat in which it was engaged. It had done this, but relief had not come, and the fierce battle had now lasted five days. The defenders of their country had now decided to die at this spot rather than yield.
The stubborn fight had so undermined the strength of the heroic army that it was now like a wrestler, out of breath and at the last gasp, only sustained by the extreme tension of his nerves and the force of a fixed idea. The army was short of ammunition and of reserves. It consisted now of a meagre line of almost exhausted men, tired in every limb, but making a last desperate effort. It seemed probable that, under a formidable push of the Germans, some point would give way and cause disaster along the whole of the rest of the line.
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The Germans continued unceasingly to harass our wearied troops with their machine-guns and with fresh assaults until, finally, at Tervaete they managed to break through our line. When once the breach was made, the stream rushed in like a wild torrent, gaining the left bank of the river and driving back our Battalions in disorder. With a frightful whirl, everything gave way before the massed effort of the enemy. A furious, mute, desperate counter-attack was crushed and wasted in this gulf of death. It was simply stifled and mown down by the deadly work of two hundred machine-guns.
There was then a moment of terrible anguish experienced along the whole line. Our troops had fallen back, without yielding, and were thronging together, forming two wings on the Yser, at the extremities of the huge bend where the Germans had broken through the defence.
This fresh front was like a fragile rampart of earth piled up in haste before a powerful torrent, a rampart which would surely fall away under the rush of the waters, as fast as it was built up. There was no longer any organised unity of action. Each one was fighting on his own account. It was an amalgamation of horrible looking men, all covered with mud and with blood, their faces blackened by the smoke of explosions. They no longer looked like human beings. As they fought there, with haggard eyes and weary arms, it was more like a vision of hell, lighted up for a moment by the wan flashes from the guns. We wondered what would happen? Was this to be the end of everything? In front of us, the attack was still coming along in constant and ever-increasing waves, with an ominous roaring, beating down our[Pg 285] crumbling human wall with furious shocks. Could our army possibly resist these endless assaults?
Just at this moment, the order arrived for this spectre of a troop to take the offensive and,............