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Updated: June 1, 2025
He was too good a soldier not to see at a glance that if the news brought by the straggler were true, the whole expedition was already a failure, and that, instead of a short siege and an easy victory, a great battle was to be fought upon the sands of Nieuport, in which defeat was destruction of the whole army of the republic, and very possibly of the republic itself. The stadholder hesitated.
We learned that a captain had actually been assigned to command an American escadrille and that the Americans at the front had been recalled and placed under his orders. Soon afterward we eleves got another delightful thrill. Thaw, Prince, Cowdin, and the other veterans were training on the Nieuport!
Eight weary months the siege had lasted; the men in town and hostile camp, exposed to the inclemency of the wintry trenches, sinking faster before the pestilence which now swept impartially through all ranks than the soldiers of the archduke had fallen at Nieuport, or in the recent assault on the Sand Hill. Of seven thousand hardly three thousand now remained in the garrison.
So it seems certain now, though it is easy to prophesy after the event. I went along the coast as far as Coxyde and Nieuport and saw secret preparations for the coast offensive. We were building enormous gun emplacements at Malo-les Bains for long-range naval guns, camouflaged in sand dunes. Our men were being trained for fighting in the dunes. Our artillery positions were mapped out.
Great was the dismay in Ostend when Colonel Piron and a few stragglers brought the heavy news of discomfiture and massacre to the high and mighty States-General in solemn meeting assembled. Meanwhile, the States' army before Nieuport, not dreaming of any pending interruption to their labours, proceeded in a steady but leisurely manner to invest the city.
It lay somewhere between the roads to Nieuport on the coast, and inland, to Pervyse, Dixmude, St. Georges, or Ramscapelle where the Belgian and German lines formed a crescent down to Ypres. The centre of that half-circle girdled by the guns was an astounding and terrible panorama, traced in its outline by the black fumes of shell-fire above the stabbing flashes of the batteries.
That, I will explain, is a very fine compliment. There was trouble getting new airplanes for every one in the escadrille. Only five arrived. They were the new model Nieuport fighting machine. Instead of having only 140 square feet of supporting surface, they had 160, and the forty-seven shot Lewis machine gun had been replaced by the Vickers, which fires five hundred rounds.
It sank before aid could be given the crew. May 17, 1915, was a bad day for Zeppelins. One of the dirigibles supposed to have attacked Ramsgate early that morning was discovered off Nieuport, Belgium, by a squadron of eight British naval machines which had made a sortie from Dunkirk. They surrounded the enemy craft and three of the pilots succeeded in approaching close to the Zeppelin.
Two thousand men were left to garrison these important positions, which lay on the line of march which the Spaniards must take coming from Bruges to Nieuport. The rest of the army then made their way across the country, intersected with ditches, and upon the following day arrived before Nieuport and prepared to besiege it.
Pointing to the harbour of Nieuport behind them, now again impassable with the flood, to the ocean on the left where rode the fleet, carrying with it all hope of escape by sea, and to the army of the archduke in front, almost within cannon-range, he simply observed that they had no possible choice between victory and death.
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