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Updated: May 28, 2025
This buoyed up the spirits of the Belgian soldiers and redoubled their efforts. Under cover of the continuous fire of their guns, the Germans made determined efforts to cross the river Nethe at Waelhem. Desperate fighting, which lasted all night and until early in the morning of October 4, took place. This attempt, however, failed.
Here was Belgium's last stronghold on the verge of downfall: the outer line of forts had already fallen; Forts Wavre, St. Catherine, Waelham, and Lierre were already prey to the Krupp mortars; the German hosts were swarming across the River Nethe, six miles to the city's south, and the cowering populace in their flight made the streets terrible to look upon. Yet at the St.
In the towns and villages along the Nethe, where the fighting was heaviest, the walls of houses had fallen into the streets and piles of furniture, mattresses, agricultural machinery, and farm carts showed where the barricades and machine-guns had been. The windows of many of the houses were stuffed with mattresses and pillows, behind which the riflemen had made a stand.
Across the Nethe, under cover of a terrific artillery fire, the Germans threw their pontoon-bridges, and when the first bridges were destroyed by the Belgian guns they built others, and when these were destroyed in turn they tried again, and at the third attempt they succeeded.
Unperturbed by this terrible proof of the danger of his position, the commanding officer stuck to his post, and for further shelter placed the body of his junior over his body. In this position he lay firing, whenever possible, from o'clock in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. The crossing of the River Nethe was attended by great loss to the Germans.
It was a glorious day, and after a heavy morning in the wards the fresh breeze and the brilliant sunshine were delightful. Our road led almost straight south through Vieux Dieu and Contich, crossing the little River Nethe at Waelhem. The Nethe encircles Antwerp on the south and south-east, and it was here that the Belgians, and in the end the British, made their chief stand against the Germans.
Through the opening thus made a German army corps had poured to fling itself against the second line of defence, formed by the Ruppel and the Nethe.
As seems to have been demonstrated in the valley of the Aisne, they are apparently ineffective against field forces deeply intrenched in a far-flung line. Early on Tuesday morning, October 6, one of the fiercest of the engagements outside Antwerp ended with the crossing of the River Nethe by the Germans and their approach to the inner forts.
The forts composing the Lierre-Waelhem sector of the outer line of defences had been pounded into silence by the German siege-guns; a strong German force, pushing through the breach thus made, had succeeded in crossing the Nethe in the face of desperate opposition; the Belgian troops, after a fortnight of continuous fighting, were at the point of exhaustion; the hospitals were swamped by the streams of wounded which for days past had been pouring in; over the city hung a cloud of despondency and gloom, for the people, though kept in complete ignorance of the true state of affairs, seemed oppressed with a sense of impending disaster.
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