Six hundred feet beyond this tower were the German trenches. The
little island was hardly a hundred feet in its greatest dimension.
I wish I could make those people who think that war is good for a
country see that Belgian outpost as I saw it that night under the
moonlight. Perhaps we were under suspicion; I do not know. Suddenly
the _fusees_, which had ceased for a time, began again, and with their
white light added to that of the moon the desolate picture of that
tiny island was a picture of the war. There was nothing lacking. There
was the beauty of the moonlit waters, there was the tragedy of the
destroyed houses and the church, and there was the horror of unburied
bodies.
There was heroism, too, of the kind that will make Belgium live in
history. For in the top of that church tower for months a Capuchin
monk has held his position alone and unrelieved. He has a telephone,
and he gains access to his position in the tower by means of a rope
ladder which he draws up after him.
Furious fighting has taken place again and again round the base of the
tower. The German shells assail it constantly. But when I left Belgium
the Capuchin monk, who has become a soldier, was still on duty; still
telephoning the ranges of the gun; still notifying headquarters of
German preparations for a charge.
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