The Belgian Front and Its Notable Features — Text and Context

was this all. The enemy was, and still is, at liberty to lower the water level by "bleeding" the inundation on his side. To defeat such attempts, it was necessary to put ourselves in a position to turn the requisite volume of water towards his lines.

Finally, provision must be made for draining off the water promptly and carefully, should the need arise, so as to prevent a disaster being caused by the enemy increasing the inundation, or merely by the torrential rain which falls at times with disheartening persistence in this depressing region. A constant struggle between the two opponents was thus always in progress. Let us say at once that the ingenuity and unwearying exertions of our men always triumphed in contests of this kind. They continue to dominate the situation completely, and the Germans have had to own themselves beaten.

The reader will realise that we cannot give a detailed description of the measures taken; the most difficult and complicated of which were unquestionably those designed to protect the Belgian lines from inundations let loose on the enemy's positions.

It has been mentioned more than once that, thanks to their command of Nieuport and its locks, the Belgians held the key of the inundations in their hands. But we must not forget that for three years German shells have been continually directed at the locks and bridges. The works that have had to be undertaken, carried out and maintained in good condition throughout this region will astonish the experts when it is possible to reveal their real character.

What shall be said, then, of the great importance of the many barrages which we have had to raise; of the dykes--some of them more than a kilometre long--of the strengthening of the banks along the canals and water-courses that furrow the country in all directions?

The embankments are of two main kinds: the solid and those with sluices. The second are used in places where the free play of the water must be allowed and regulated. It will easily be believed that the construction of these artificial barriers, able to withstand heavy pressure, needed the piling up of 100,000, 200,000 and even 300,000 sand-bags apiece; that not fewer than a _million_ bags were required for the largest dyke, the contents of which were a trifling 30,000 cubic yards!

We cannot say more on the subject here; but the few figures given will, we think, convey an adequate idea of the vast work entailed in controlling the inundations.

(_b_) _The Trenches._

When the first dyke, running continuously along the front, had been finished, and the waters were sufficiently under control to relieve all fears of a serious catastrophe, and when the water-posts disputed with the enemy had been occupied in the midst of the floods, we had to give immediate attention to improving the lines, completing earthworks and organising the depth of the positions in accordance with the general principles set forth above.

There was no time to be lost. With the return of fine weather we had to expect a renewal of activity on the part of the enemy, who apparently had not given up his ambitious designs on Dunkirk and Calais. In each of the sectors which our depleted divisions had to guard, operations were organised on a systematic plan, with the firm determination of carrying them through in the shortest time possible. Work of any importance could not, of course, be done in broad daylight, for, as we have already said, nothing escaped the enemy's notice. Though far away, his guns never ceased to plough up the grounds, and to what losses should we not have exposed ourselves had we attempted to strengthen our positions in daylight, close up to his fines and before his very eyes!

So in the depths of a wet and severe winter our men had to toil during the night, under the most trying conditions imaginable. Now that these have been considerably improved, thanks to a perfect organisation which extends to the smallest details, it is difficult to realise the enormous efforts and the real physical suffering which the defenders of the Yser had to face during those long months of the early part of the war.

The unit detailed for work in the front line of a given sector was, by the irony of words, "resting," or partly resting--which means that it was quartered among ruins in cantonments partially destitute of resources, a long way from the workshops to which it had to find its way at night-fall. "Doing their bit" valiantly, sustained by a self-confidence which never deserted them, the men showed on all occasions the greatest goodwill, and--despite certain reports to the contrary--unfailing good humour. They grumbled a good deal, goodness knows; and who would not have done the same in their place? But they kept going, enduring hard labour and privation, under the stimulus of a burning desire to punish the enemy who was responsible for all the troubles that afflicted them.

Clad in the most weird and often deplorable clothes, these men trudged along through the darkness of the night, over muddy tracks and sodden roads, towards the marshy belt of flooded meadows. This tramp through the night was a real penance. At every step the men stumbled in the heavy and sticky mud, over displaced cobbles or in shell-holes brimming with water. They had to struggle along in this fashion, sometimes for hours on end, to reach the "material depôts" where such sand-bags, stakes, corrugated iron sheets, barbed wire and tools as could be got together were distributed among them. To-day there is an abundance of all these things; but at the time of which we write supplies were very short, and one had to get along as best one could with anything that came to hand in a haphazard way which now seems pitiable.

However, what did it matter? Carrying loads which added to the difficulties of progress, the men plodded along almost indistinguishable paths and tracks where the least slip threatened to send them headlong into deep mud. Extreme caution was needed to avoid rousing the enemy. Lights were constantly thrown up from his lines, flooding the dreary country with their pale radiance. When one rose, the men instantly threw themselves flat in the mire. Occasionally the column would be surprised before it could take cover, and be subjected to bursts of machine-gun fire. In this way many brave fellows died an obscure death while performing one of the most thankless and disagreeable tasks imaginable.

On reaching the scene of action, the men set to work, forgetting their fatigue in the anxiety to add their quotum to that done on the previous night before daylight should return; raising and consolidating the frail rampart of sandbags, building fresh shelters or arranging the auxiliary defences in front of the trenches.

What words can fitly describe the patience, courage and endurance of these workers, perpetually overlooked by the enemy, toiling to exhaustion under the fire of machine-guns trained on our lines, exposed to death-dealing bombs, a single one of which would sometimes nullify the efforts of a whole night or burst like a thunder-clap in the midst of a group of men, scattering death and horrible wounds?

No suffering, however, could break their indomitable will. Admirable they were and are. Nothing could be more touching than the self-sacrificing spirit which animated these heroes. They had not even the satisfaction of being able to return blow for blow, to increase their keenness and energy. On the contrary, they knew that death threatened them, not while rifle in hand and drunk with the madness of the fray, but while ingloriously wielding a common trenching-tool.

This dreadful life lasted for weeks and months on end. Think of the exhaustion of it, when the same men had to work every night, then take their turn on guard in the trenches without any chance of getting a really refreshing sleep! Later on, the bringing of the regiments up to full strength and the advanced condition of the work fortunately made it possible to arrange a judicious rotation of duty. Nevertheless, our men have never been able to consider their job quite done, since on the Belgian front one has constantly to reconstruct, repair, even entirely rebuild, fortifications damaged by the enemy's fire or by water--that second foe which is often more destructive than the first.

The best means of arriving at a due appreciation of the perseverance shown by the Belgian troops and of the time required for the completion of their task, is a numerical statement of the work actually achieved. We may note that the whole front organised by the Belgian Army extends for about 31 kilometres (19¼ miles), as measured along the front line of trenches; also, that this system of continuous or discontinuous positions has a great depth, and that each position is made up of several lines, one behind the other, their number varying according to tactical requirements or topographical conditions.

Without fear of being accused of exaggeration, we may, therefore, reckon the total length of the trenches which the Belgian Army had to make, as 10 to 15 times that of the front itself. To this we must add the many kilometres of communication trenches which allow the men to move from one line to another without being seen and to a certain extent without being hit by the enemy.

At a low estimate the total work amounts to at least 400 kilometres of earthworks[B]--the distance, as the crow flies, from Paris to Cologne or from Paris to Strassburg, or half as much again as that from Ostend to Arlon, the longest stretch which can be measured in Belgium.

The accompanying photographs show several views of the trenches of the Belgian front on the Yser, and give a better idea than any words of the real convict work accomplished during three years of incessant labour in horribly difficult ground. Just think what it involved! Every yard of fire-trench--traverses and parados included--required the moving of 7 to 8 cubic metres of earth; every yard of communication trench, the transport and placing of at least 4 cubic metres. You will not be far out if you reckon at 3½ _million cubic metres_ (4-2/3 million cubic yards) the volume of the earthworks raised on the Belgian front in the construction of the main and communication trenches alone.

Trenches of both classes are either formed entirely of sand-bags or very solidly revetted with sand-bags, wattles or bricks. All these materials have had to be laboriously brought up from the rear. We mention this fact again, as it cannot be over-emphasised. The total number of bags used runs into _tens of millions_, while the superficial area of the hurdles placed in position must be reckoned in _thousands of square yards_.

But the mere making of the trenches is not the whole business. They must be protected from attack by means of a dense and deep system of auxiliary defences--networks of barbed wire, _chevaux de frise_, land mines, etc. What statistician could calculate the number of the _hundreds of thousands_ of stakes that have been driven and the _thousands of miles_ of wire arranged in front of the parapets by our heroic workers?

Wherever our lines are near those of the enemy--who as a rule possesses the great advantage of commanding them--special works are needed to prevent bullets enfilading the trenches and doing havoc. All these trenches are, therefore, covered with a series of arches, which may be seen in some of our photographs. The soft bottoms of the whole system of defences must also be carefully consolidated to render their occupation possible and to enable the men to move about with ease. Duckboards, assembled just behind the front and then brought into the lines, have had to be laid everywhere with infinite labour in the muddy bottom of the trenches--dozens of miles of them--and relaid heaven only knows how often!

It would be a good thing if one could regard the works when once carried through as definitely finished; but that would be too much to hope for, since the most solid revetments crumble in sorry fashion under bombardment, and the elements also seem to be bent on destroying them. Anything heavy settles little by little, owing to the lack of consistency in the subsoil. In bad weather especially, when the rain never ceases and the floods spread, our men daily report parapets giving way and duckboards disappearing under the water or mud. Then everything has to be done over again. One must set to work, with a patience ever sorely tried, to reconstruct laboriously what was originally put together only by the most strenuous efforts. Thus it has come about that many of the trenches have had to be reformed _five or six times_.

So far we have dealt only with the main positions. We turn now to the prodigious effort demanded by the construction of advanced fortifications right in the middle of the floods. The first step is to make foot-bridges, several kilometres long in some places. (One of our photographs gives a striking view of such a bridge.) Over these, which the enemy can sweep with his fire, all the materials needed for making the advanced works must be carried, usually on men's backs and in any case by very precarious means of transport. A mere "water-post" requires thousands of sand-bags, so you can form some idea of the labour implied in the building of one of the many important posts situated in the inundated area to protect our main positions. All the earthworks, reckoned in hundreds of cubic yards; all the concrete emplacements which alone are able to withstand the continual bombardment; all the close networks of barbed wire have had to materialise but a few yards away from the enemy's lines. You may well ask yourself whence the men have drawn the reserves of perseverance, energy and pluck that were needed in such conditions for raising fortifications like these above the waters.

(_c_) _Various Engineering Works._

Most of the works already referred to were carried out either entirely or chiefly by the infantry, who, after hours of guard duty in the trenches, laid aside the rifle only to pick up a tool and indefatigably continue their rough and dangerous labour among the same scenes of ruin and devastation.

We have remarked in passing that much detail work of widely different kinds has had to go forward simultaneously with the organisation proper of the defensive positions. Its execution was entrusted to special troops; engineers (sappers), bridge-builders, telegraphists, railway corps, etc., as well as to many labour companies consisting of men of the older classes attached to the engineers. Men of the heavy and field artillery have had to make the many emplacements for batteries of all calibres, which have increased steadily in number as the Belgian Army has been able to get and assemble in its workshops an abundance of the requisite material. It is impossible to describe the innumerable works of this kind in detail without straying too far, so we will content ourselves here with reviewing them briefly and giving some figures which will enable the reader to appreciate the great responsibilities assumed by the various branches.

1. _Concrete Shelters, Redoubts and Fighting-Posts._--The weakness of earthworks constructed with sand-bags, which are scattered in all directions by bursting shells, has compelled us to build numerous concrete shelters, though the work is beset by many difficulties and sometimes has to be executed right under the enemy's nose--bombproofs, machine-gun posts and fighting-posts for the battalion, regimental and battery staffs. All construction of this kind must be preceded by a thorough consolidation of the ground, which in its natural condition is too soft to support such heavy weights. At several points in the front lines themselves we have also had to make particularly strong _points d'appui_, usually concrete redoubts, in which a large garrison may hold out to the last man.

The importance of these works will be inferred from the statement that their construction has involved the use of at least 300,000 to 400,000 cubic yards of concrete.

2. _Communications._--It will be remembered that the district occupied by the Belgian Army was poorly supplied with railways, roads and usable tracks. After the battle of Flanders (October to November, 1914) the continuous movement of troops over the existing roads, added to the effects of bombardment and bad weather, had done great damage to almost all the few available means of communication. This state of things had to be promptly remedied, both to accelerate putting the sector into a state of defence and, what was still more urgent, to enable all kinds of supplies required by the troops and the materials for the defence works to be brought up.

Special units, therefore, laid in the advanced army zone some 180 kilometres of new railways of standard gauge, and several hundred kilometres of Decauville railway. The light tracks were gradually pushed through the communication and main trenches, and even along the foot-bridges leading to the main pickets.

So that our men might cross the countless canals, streams and ditches met with everywhere, and move over flooded and marshy areas, the Belgian engineers built hundreds of bridges and thousands of culverts, besides some tens of kilometres of the foot-bridges already described. As an example, we may mention that one of these foot-bridges, crossing a marsh in the southern part of the front, is quite 800 metres long.

As for the road-system, existing roads had to be remade and improved, while new ones were built and narrow ones widened and strengthened sufficiently to carry all kinds of traffic. This road-building and mending was applied to 400 _kilometres of roads and usable tracks_ in all; and absorbed some 500,000 tons of road metal and as many tons of sand--which involved the moving and handling of, say, 1,000,000,000 tons of various materials.

The upkeep of the roads, which carry a dense and continuous traffic, demands unceasing labour, especially in the winter.

In conclusion, we should mention that there are, in addition to the road-system properly so-called, many infantry routes and approaches for artillery which have had to be made with great difficulty across marshes and soft meadowland.

3. _Various Forms of Construction._--One cannot pretend to give even a bare list of the varied and numberless erections for which our engineers have been responsible behind the Belgian front, to accommodate the fighting troops and auxiliary services and mitigate the scarcity of suitable quarters. For three years German guns have battered everything within range, and converted the humble, peaceful villages of Veurne-Ambacht into heaps of ruins. One must go far behind the front to find any premises that have still escaped shell-fire. In them have been established all the organisations which need not be actually in the lines, and there also are quartered as large a part as possible of the resting units. But they cannot hold all the troops not in the trenches; and it will readily be understood that battalions held in reserve and warned first in case of an attack, must be near enough to throw themselves into the fight without loss of time. The problem has been solved by building a large number of huts in each divisional sector; yet without grouping them so closely as to afford an easy mark to the enemy's guns and aeroplanes. So the hutments, capable of accommodating some 100,000 men and about 15,000 horses, have been scattered over the whole of the district occupied.

In addition, much has had to be done and many buildings have had to be erected, in order to secure the best possible conditions for the elaborate organisations of the medical service, even in the fighting zone. We have had to provide bombproof first-aid stations, dressing-stations, and field hospitals, in many cases quite close to the lines, under circumstances the difficulties of which have already been sufficiently emphasised.

Huge hospitals, with several thousands of beds, have had to be built from the foundations upwards for the reception of the wounded not able to endure removal to the rear. Furnes, the only town in the district, at first provided invaluable accommodation; but, when systematic bombardment of the city endangered even the lives of the poor wounded, the hospital services had to be transferred elsewhere. The splendid hospital at La Panne, Adinkerke, Hoogstade and Beveren-sur-Yser, have long been regarded as models of their kind, though their establishment was attended by serious difficulties. Every possible modern improvement has been turned to account in their equipment; and although within earshot of the never-silent guns, they have accomplished marvels which the greatest authorities on the subject have on many occasions unstintedly and rightly praised.