Furnes is not on the coast, but three miles inland. So we turned sharp
to the left toward La Panne, our destination, a small seaside resort
in times of peace, but now the capital of Belgium. It was dark now,
and the roads were congested with the movements of troops, some going
to the trenches, those out of the trenches going back to their billets
for twenty-four hours' rest, and the men who had been on rest moving
up as pickets or reserves. Even in the darkness it was easy to tell
the rested men from the ones newly relieved. Here were mostly
Belgians, and the little Belgian soldier is a cheery soul. He asks
very little, is never surly. A little food, a little sleep--on straw,
in a stable or a church--and he is happy again. Over and over, as I
saw the Belgian Army, I was impressed with its cheerfulness under
unparalleled conditions.
Most of them have been fighting since Liege. Of a hundred and fifty
thousand men only fifty thousand remain. Their ration is meagre
compared with the English and the French, their clothing worn and
ragged. They are holding the inundated district between Nieuport and
Dixmude, a region of constant struggle for water-soaked trenches,
where outposts at the time I was there were being fought for through
lakes of icy water filled with barbed wire, where their wounded fall
and drown.
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