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Updated: May 23, 2025
The fighting still continued for part of November, 1914, but for the month of October no definite result was to be recorded. At Ypres, on November 2, 1914, the Germans captured 2,300 English troops and many machine guns. Dixmude was stormed by the Germans on the 10th of November, and they crossed the Yser Canal, capturing the Allies position west of Langemark, also driving them out of St. Eloi.
From Furnes a number of roads lead in various directions to Ypres, Dixmude, Nieuport, and the coast, making it a convenient centre for an organization such as ours, requiring, as we did, ready means of reaching the front in any direction, and open communication with our base of supplies.
Guynemer had reported at the camp on August 15. On the seventeenth, at 9.20 o'clock, he brought down a two-seated Albatros which fell in flames at Wladsloo, and five minutes later a D.F.W. which collapsed, also in flames, south of Dixmude. This double execution avenged the death of Captain Auger and of another Stork, Sergeant Cornet, killed the day before.
In Nieuport and Dixmude themselves the fighting was frequently from house to house, the most deadly form of fighting known. The wounds we had to treat were correspondingly severe limbs sometimes almost completely torn off, terrible wounds of the skull, and bullet wounds where large masses of the tissues had been completely torn away.
At last, after many discussions and many halts, we received our orders. We were asked to get into the town of Dixmude, where there were many wounded. It was about sixteen kilometres away from Furnes, and about half that distance from where we had halted for lunch.
They had lost Dixmude for a while but they had gained great glory, and the inspiration of their epic resistance had come from the quiet officer who stood there, straight and grave, in his white gloves and gala uniform. One must have been in the North to know something of the tie that exists, in this region of bitter and continuous fighting, between officers and soldiers.
We were able to run out to skirmishes, to reach the wounded where they had fallen. We have gone where the fighting had been at such close range that in one barnyard in Ramscappelle lay thirteen dead Germans, French and Belgians. We brought back three wounded Germans from the stable. We were in Dixmude on the afternoon when the Germans destroyed the town by artillery fire.
But one of the massed attacks which have formed such a prominent feature of this terrible war had temporarily rolled back the defence in the Dixmude district, and it was deemed unwise to submit the hospital to the risk of possible disaster. We were fortunate in having Dr.
At a turn in the road the battle lay before us, and we were in the zone of fire. Away across the fields was a line of villages, with the town of Dixmude a little to the right of us, perhaps two kilometres away. From each little town smoke was rising in separate columns, which met at the top in a great pall of smoke, as a heavy black cloud cresting above the light on the horizon line.
It was a glorious night, and one had the advantage of a clear road. We were driving northwards, and the sky was lit up by the flashes of the guns at Nieuport and Dixmude, whilst we could hear their dull roar in the distance. All along the road were encamped the Turcos, and their camp- fires, with the dark forms huddled around them, gave a picturesque touch to the scene.
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