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Updated: June 28, 2025
The affair was only briefly mentioned in the communiqués: "On the 22nd a mine was exploded under a German gallery on our front. An enemy mining party is believed to have been blown up." The mining officer was greatly pleased, however, as only some few yards of his own gallery had suffered.
As far as I know, the story of their first and last meeting has never yet been told to the world at large. It is a harrowing tale, and it found no place in official communiqués.
German communiqués afforded some means of correction, but they were universally disbelieved or discounted as containing an amount of falsehood of which no ally could be guilty, although, until the last few months of the war, they were rather less misleading than our own. Nor was it only official news that was delusive.
The official communiqués of Budapest and Vienna, dated August 9th, recount on this point precise details which no one has hitherto troubled to deny.
Long before American ammunition was delivered in any quantity to England and long before any at all was delivered to France, not only did the Government influence newspapers and official gazettes, but the official Communiques alleged that quantities of American ammunition were being used on the West front.
As late as Wednesday morning the great majority of the inhabitants of Antwerp remained in total ignorance of the real state of affairs. Morning after morning the Matin and the Metropole had published official communiqués categorically denying that any of the forts had been silenced and asserting in the most positive terms that the enemy was being held in check all along the line.
All through, my object has been to lay hold of the main outline of what has happened on the Western front during the past eleven months, and if I could, to make them clear to other civilians, men and women, as clearly and rapidly as possible, in this interval between the régime of communiqués and war-correspondence under which we have lived so long, and those detailed and scientific histories which every Army, and probably every corps and division, is now either writing, or preparing to write, about its own doings in the war.
He told me, too, that in spite of opposition from airplane builders he had secured a long-contemplated improvement; and that he had had a special camera made for him with which he could photograph a machine as it fell. His parting words were: "I hope to fly to-morrow, but don't expect to see my name any more in the communiqués. That's all over: I have bagged my fifty Boches."
Occasional confusion, even local panic, occasional loss of communication and misunderstanding of orders, occasional incompetence and stupidity there must be in such a vast backward sweep of battle, but skill, purpose, superb bravery were never lacking in any portion of the field; and the German communiqués exultantly announcing the "total defeat of the British Armies" may be compared, mutatis mutandis, with the reports from German Headquarters just before the first battle of the Marne.
That night the talk at the Visitors' Château, during and after a very simple dinner in an old panelled room, was particularly interesting and animated. The morning's newspapers had just arrived from England, with the official communiques of the morning.
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