ANTWERP TO GALLIPOLI
A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them
by Arthur Ruhl
with Illustrations from Photographs
Contents
Chapters
I. "The Germans Are Coming!"
II. Paris at Bay
III. After the Marne
IV. The Fall of Antwerp I
V. Paris Again-and Bordeaux: Journal of a Flight from a London Fog
VI. "The Great Days"
VII. Two German Prison Camps
VIII. In the German Trenches at La Bassée
IX. The Road to Constantinople: Rumania and Bulgaria
X. The Adventure of the Fifty Hostages
XI. With the Turks at the Dardanelles
XII. Soghan-Dere and the Flier of Ak-Bash
XIII. A War Correspondents' Village
XIV. Cannon Fodder
XV. East of Lemberg: Through Austria-Hungary to the Galician Front
XVI. In the Dust of the Russian Retreat
Chapter I
The Germans Are Coming!
The Germans had already entered Brussels, their scouts were reported onthe outskirts of Ghent; a little farther now, over behind the horizonwind-mills, and we might at any moment come on them.
For more than a fortnight we had been hurrying eastward, hearing,through cable despatches and wireless, the far-off thunder of that vastgray tide rumbling down to France. The first news had come drifting in,four thousand miles away, to the little Wisconsin lake where I wasfishing. A strange herd of us, all drawn in one way or another by thewar, had caught the first American ship, the old St. Paul, and, withdecks crowded with trunks and mail-bags from half a dozen ships, steamedeastward on the all but empty ocean. There were reservists hurrying tothe colors, correspondents, men going to rescue wives and sisters. Somewere hit through their pocketbooks, some through their imaginations—like the young women hoping to be Red Cross nurses, or to help in someway, they weren't sure how.
One had a steamer chair next mine—a pale, Broadway tomboy sort of girlin a boyish sailor suit, who looked as if she needed sleep. Withoutexactly being on the stage, she yet appeared to live on the fringe ofit, and combined the slangy freedoms of a chorus girl with a certainquick wisdom and hard sense. It was she who discovered a steeragepassenger, on the Liverpool dock, who had lost his wife and was bringinghis four little children back to Ireland from Chicago, and, while theother cabin passengers fumed over their luggage, took up a collectionfor him then and there.
"Listen here!" she would say, grabbing my arm. "I want to tell yousomething. I'm going to see this thing—d'you know what I mean?—forwhat it'll do to me—you know—for its effect on my mind! I didn't sayanything about it to anybody—they'd only laugh at me—d'you know what Imean? They don't think I've got any serious side to me. Now, I don'tmind things—I mean blood—you know—they don't affect me, and I've readabout nursing—I've prepared for this! Now, I don't know how to go aboutit, but it seems to me that a woman who can—you know—go right with'em—jolly 'em along—might be just what they'd want—d'you know what Imean?"
One Russian had said good-by to a friend at the dock, he to try to getthrough this way, the other by the Pacific and Trans-Siberian. TheEnglishman who shared my stateroom was an advertising man. "I've gotcontracts worth fifty thousand pounds," he said, "and I don't supposethey're worth the paper they're written on." There were several Belgiansand a quartet of young Frenchmen who played cards ev