THE TRENCH DAYS: The Collected War Tales of William Le Queux (WW1 Adventure Sagas, Espionage Thrillers & Action Classics). William Le Queux
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“They have all been shot — everyone of them. The soldiers are using bombs to set fire to the houses everywhere. It is a raging furnace outside?”
“Dieu!” gasped the old man. “What shall we do?”
“Heaven help us! I do not know,” replied the young doctor. “I only just managed to escape with my life. I saw, only a minute or two ago, in the Place d’Armes, quite two hundred men and boys — old men of seventy-five and boys of twelve, many of whom I knew — drawn up, and then shot down by a machine-gun. Père Jules, our old friend, was among them — and surely he was fully eighty!”
“Holy Jesu! May God place His curse upon these Germans?” cried the old fellow fervently. “As surely as there is a God in heaven, so assuredly shall we be avenged by a Hand which is stronger and more relentless than the Kaiser’s in wreaking vengeance. What else do you know?” he inquired eagerly.
“Xavier Wasseige, manager of the Banque de la Meuse, has been shot, together with his two sons, and Camille Finette and his little boy of twelve have also been murdered. They are wiping out the whole, district of Saint Médart, between the station and the bridge. All is in flames. The soldiers are worse than African savages. The new post-office has been burnt and blown up. It is only a heap of ruins.”
Uncle François knit his grey brows, and gazed steadily into his nephew’s eyes.
“Look here! Are you lying, Pierre?” he asked. “Have you really seen all this?”
“Yes. I have seen it with my own eyes.”
“I don’t believe you,” declared the old man bluntly. “I will go out and see for myself what these German fiends are doing.”
“Oh! In the name of God, don’t!” cried his nephew in quick apprehension. “You will certainly be killed. The whole of the Rue Sax, along by the river-bank, is burning. Not a single house has escaped. They intend, it seems, to destroy all our town, on both sides of the river, now that they have repaired their pontoon. Think that we have lived in Dinant to witness this!”
“But what shall we do?” gasped the poor old fellow. “How can we save these poor women?” His words were overheard by Aimée, who rose quickly and came forward, asking:
“What has happened?” and, indicating the young man, she asked, “What has this gentleman been telling you?”
“Oh — well — nothing very important, Mademoiselle,” François answered with hesitation. “This is Doctor Pierre Fiévet, my nephew, and he has just brought me a message. There is no real danger, Mademoiselle,” he assured her. “Our splendid troops are still close by, and will drive the invaders out, as before. The brigand, Von Emmich, will meet his deserts before long, depend upon it, my dear Mademoiselle.”
The girl, thus assured, withdrew to allow the two men to continue their conversation, which she believed to be of a private character.
“Don’t alarm these women, Pierre,” whispered old François. “Poor creatures, they are suffering enough already,” “But what will you do? What can you do? At any moment they may burn down this place — and you will all be suffocated like rats in a hole.”
“And, surely, that will be a far better fate for the women, than if the soldiers seize them,” was the old man’s hard response. “I, and your cousin Marie, will die with them here — if it is necessary. I, for one, am not afraid to die. I have made my peace with God. I am too old and feeble to handle a rifle, but when I was young I was a soldier of Belgium. Our little country has shown the world that she can fight. If the great wave of Germany sweeps further upon us we must necessarily be crushed out of existence. But the Powers, France, England, and Russia, will see that our memory — our grave — is avenged. I still believe, Pierre, in our country, and in our good King Albert!”
“Forty men over at the brewery of Nicaise Frères, who were found in the cellars an hour ago, were brought out and shot,” the young man said. “But ah! mon oncle, you should have witnessed the scene in the Place d’Armes — how they placed our poor, innocent townspeople against the wall — ranging them in rows, under pretence that the German Colonel was to address them. A miserable spy, who spoke Walloon as fluently as I do myself, shouted that Colonel Beeger wished to speak to them, and to urge them to bow to the inevitable, and become German subjects. They were all attention, ready to listen, and little dreaming the awful fate in store for them. They never foresaw the German treachery until a little grey machine-gun at the corner, with the four men behind it, suddenly rattled out, and in a few moments the whole of them were wallowing in their own life-blood. Ah! it was fearful, cruel, inhuman — ghastly! And this is in our civilised age!”
“Pierre,” exclaimed the good-natured old fellow softly, so that the women in that dank Dantesque vault should not overhear. “Our God is the God of justice and of righteousness. These murderers may wreck and desecrate our churches; they may kill our dear devoted priests; they may ridicule our religion, yet the great God who watches over us will, most assuredly, grind in His mill the arrogant nation that has sought to crush the world beneath Prussian despotism. We may die to-day in our good cause, but the Kaiser to-morrow will be hurled down and die accursed by humanity, and damned to hell by his Creator!”
“True, our poor people are falling beneath German bullets — though they have committed no offence against the German nation — yet what can you do here? You seem to be caught in a trap. What shall you do with these women?”
“Heaven knows?” gasped the honest old fellow. “What can I do? What do you suggest?” and he wrung his hands.
At that moment a white-haired old man, nearly eighty years of age, staggered down the broken steps, shrieking:
“Ah! Let me die! Let me die! The brutes are shooting men and boys in the Place, and now the soldiers are here — to kill us all!”
A terrible panic ensued at those significant words. The women huddled together, shrieked and screamed, for there, sure enough, came down the stone steps a grey-coated German soldier in spiked canvas-covered helmet, shouting roughly some command in German, and carrying his gleaming bayonet fixed before him.
“You women must all come up out of here!” cried a stern voice in bad French, as several other soldiers followed the first who had descended, until a dozen stood in the cellar.
The poor frightened creatures shrieked, wailed, and prayed for protection.
But the brutal soldiers, led by a swaggering young lieutenant of the Brandenburg infantry, were obdurate and commenced to roughly ill-treat the women, and cuff them towards the steps.
Uncle François raised his voice in loud protest, but next second a shot rang sharply out, and he fell dead upon the stones, a bullet through his heart, while the brute who had shot him roughly kicked his body aside with a German oath.
Such an action cowed them all.
A silence fell — the grim, terrible silence of those caught in a death-trap, for the women were now held by the enemy, and they knew, alas! too well, what their fate would now be — either dishonour or death.
Chapter Fifteen
Betrays the Traitor
The few moments that followed were indeed full of grim horror.
An old peasant woman, standing by Aimée, in her frenzy, spat at one of the German soldiers, whereupon he struck her in the breast with his bayonet, and, with a piercing shriek, the poor thing fell, her thin, bony hands clutching at the stones in her death agony.
“Come! no loitering!” shouted the young officer brutally, in French. “We must have you cellar-rats out above ground.” Then, catching sight of Aimée, he approached her, and spoke some words in German. She knew the language well, but did not reply, pretending that she did not understand.
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