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Updated: May 23, 2025
It had been planned to show me first a detail map of the places I was to visit, and with this map before me to explain the present position of the Belgian line along the embankment of the railroad from Nieuport to Dixmude. The map was ready on a table in the officers' mess, a bare room with three long tables of planks, to which a flight of half a dozen steps led from the headquarters room below.
We dodged the litter in the roadway, where, to my amazement, two old ladies were searching in the rubbish-heaps for the relics of their houses. They had stayed in Dixmude during this terrible bombardment, hidden in some cellar, and now had emerged, in their respectable black gowns, to see what damage had been done.
They have annihilated Louvain and Malines; they have but lately levelled Dixmude; their torches, their incendiary squirts and their bombs are about to attack Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres and Furnes, which are like so many living museums, forming one of the most delightful, delicate and fragile ornaments of Europe.
The Belgian aviators on the same day threw bombs on the aviation field at Handzaeme and the railroad junction at Cortemarck, and, south of Dixmude, the famous birdman, Garros, fought a successful duel in the air with a German aviator. An aviator of the Allies flew over the aerodrome at Lille on April 1, 1915, and dropped a football. The Germans hastened to cover.
These bridgeheads were protected by forts manned by machine guns, and the approaches were commanded by heavy artillery fire, but defense was destroyed in the middle of May, 1915. The Germans concentrated their efforts against the Belgians at one point between Ypres and Dixmude. They bombarded the trenches, using bombs filled with poisonous gas.
French and Belgian patrols thrusting forward cautiously found themselves under rifle-fire from the enemy's trenches which had previously appeared abandoned. Something like an offensive developed again, and it was an unpleasant surprise when Dixmude was retaken by the Germans. As a town its possession was not of priceless value to the enemy.
The whole of Houthulst forest, which then had hardly been touched, was taken at a stroke; and on the 29th Dixmude fell and the Belgians were across the Roulers-Menin road. As a consequence of this and of Haig's advance the Germans had to evacuate the rest of the Lys salient and draw back their front towards Lille and Douai.
But it was necessary to open the door to bring in another stretcher where a man lay still. "Pardon, mon capitaine," said one of the stretcher-bearers, as the door banged to, with a frightful clap. Yesterday the enemy reoccupied Dixmude. So said the official bulletin, with its incomparable brevity of eloquence.
The waters of the Yser had helped to turn the tide of war. The sluice-gates were opened and flooded the surrounding fields, so that the enemy's artillery was bogged and could not move. For a little while the air in all that region between Furnes and Nieuport, Dixmude and Pervyse, was cleansed of the odour and fume of battle.
A battalion of Belgian troops on June 14, 1915, gained the east bank of the Yser south of the Dixmude railroad bridge, and established themselves there. The Belgians also destroyed a German blockhouse in the vicinity of the Château of Dixmude. The Belgian troops, south of St. Georges, captured a German trench, all the defenders of which were killed or made prisoners on June 22, 1915.
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