the no. 7 armoured car
by sub-lieutenant g. thiery, of the 1st regiment of guides, in command of the group of armoured cars of the 1st cavalry division
what an easy and pleasant task it is to relate the adventures of another person and to praise the exploits and the courage of a friend. but how delicate and trying it is to describe one's own deeds! to the man who considers himself rewarded by the feeling of having done his duty, it is by no means easy to have to say: "i was there and this is what happened to me...." however, since i am requested to give this account, i must do so.
it was at wommelghem, near antwerp, that, on the 4th of september, 1914, i was given command of the no. 7 armoured car attached to the cavalry division. i will begin by congratulating those who invented and thought out this engine of warfare. some have been built which were six months in the work-shops. of these, some are monuments which can never be utilised, and others are wonders invented in offices, which need to be stripped of three quarters of their improvements, in order to be of any use under fire. in three weeks, the minerva factory and the cockerill work-shops delivered to the belgian army[pg 156] what i believe to be the best armoured car in use. it is sure, easily worked, rapid, strong, and efficiently protected. the no. 7 car brought me a number of brave men. first there was count guy de berlaymont, the personification of courage and indifference to danger; then constant heureux, bravery and abnegation made man; finally dujardin and gouffaux, two good and valiant soldiers. all of them, like myself, were volunteers.
without any preliminaries, we found ourselves at once in the midst of the drama.
on the evening of the 5th of september, at the criterium at antwerp, lieutenant hankar, count henri de villermont, prince baudouin de ligne, misson, philippe de zualar, berlaymont and i were sitting round a table, discussing our departure joyfully.
on the evening of the 6th, berlaymont and i were again at the criterium, and big tears came to our eyes, as we looked at the empty seats which had been occupied, the previous evening, by our friends. that afternoon, whilst patrolling round herenthals, we heard that their vehicles had been attacked near zammel. all that we were able to snatch from the enemy had been three dead men, four wounded ones, some weapons, and two armoured cars.
the germans had now a fresh item, and a very big one, on the account that we had to settle with them.
on the 8th of september, we had our revenge. for the second time, the army made a sortie from antwerp, and the cavalry division, forming the left wing, advanced towards louvain. information of all kinds poured in at headquarters and one detail struck general de witte, that chief of whom i can[pg 157] never speak without the greatest respect and admiration. the general had been told that the village of werchter was only weakly guarded. a bold stroke might make us masters of the passage of the dyle. this stroke was to be attempted.
the execution of it was confided to the battalion of cyclist carabineers, that heroic phalanx which does not need to be introduced to any one, so well is it known. everyone is acquainted with our diables noirs (black devils), those of haelen, and of everywhere else where there were blows to be given and laurels to reap, that band of brave men who always set out laughing, dressed their wounds whilst singing, and returned to the fight the following day, their natural ardour increased by the desire to avenge the deaths of the previous day.
my armoured car set out at the head of the little column. between schriek and tremeloo, a company of cyclists was left to serve as support for the two others who went forward. we arrived at tremeloo. in this devastated and deserted village, lieutenant fritz de menten and half a platoon of the 2nd lancers were awaiting us. they confirmed the information that werchter was only held by a small force. they had been assured that the boche foot-soldiers, with the exception of those who were doing the cooking in the square, were all busy getting drunk on yack op at the wine-shop.
what enthusiasm there was amongst us! our two hundred and fifty cyclists were relishing the joy that they would have in seeing their old acquaintances again, the prussian pilferers, house-burners, and torturers. they set off in three columns. the middle one, which i led, took the direct road. another[pg 158] one turned to the left, in order to attack werchter, by the dyle. the third column took the plain to the right, in order to approach the village from the north. lieutenant de menten's half platoon served as scouts for the column on the left. we rushed off at full speed. the bridge over the laak, a small tributary to the right of the dyle, was soon crossed, the cycles were then left, and the sharp-shooters went off at a trot, stooping in order to be hidden in the harvest fields.
i reached the first houses in werchter with my car. there was not a soul to be seen! this silence and mystery did not seem natural to us. a hundred yards away, the chief street was barricaded. an inhabitant assured us that the few boches who had occupied werchter had already taken flight in the direction of the bridges. we immediately took the machine-gun out of the car, together with its support and the cases of cartridges, intending to carry all this over the barricade, which the motor-car could not cross, and then sweep the bridge with balls, so that our prey should not escape us.
berlaymont, with the machine-gun on his shoulder, and a cyclist carrying two cartridge cases, were the first to enter the street. they had not gone ten steps when they were greeted by a volley of bullets. the shooting was from all the windows and the cyclist had his arm broken. this volley was evidently a signal, as the whole circumference of werchter now broke out into short flames. an infernal firing then took place, interspersed with the tac-tac-tac of maxims. werchter was a trap. we were attacking the enemy one against four, and our adversary was invulnerable behind the walls of the houses. our[pg 159] retreat was obligatory, but the question was, could the destruction of the battalion be avoided?
it is in these tragic moments that the worth of a troop can be judged. in reply to their officers' whistling, the cyclists fell back in good order, replying at the same time to the enemy's firing. just as though they were at drill, my men put back the machine-gun support in its box, and strapped it up, whilst the chief gunner put his cannon on its battery and awaited the order to fire. in the car, each man took the place assigned to him beforehand: the chief gunner standing up by the side of the driver. the latter charged the machine and also attended to his driving. the second gunner was seated in turkish fashion at the back. he passed the charges full and arranged the empty cases. the chief was kneeling down at his side, the upper part of his body higher than the plating. it is his part to direct the aim, with the aid of his field-glasses. this is the dangerous post, at which three quarters of those killed in armoured cars have had their skulls pierced. i have been wounded twice in the head at this post.
our cyclists were now beginning to recross the laak bridge, and we opened a rapid fire on the limits of werchter, where the enemy appeared to be coming out in our pursuit.
firing attracts firing, and a shower of balls crackled over the armoured car, passing close to our ears with the noise of huge, furious flies buzzing quickly through the air.
our brave hotchkiss fired without ceasing. the second gunner was tending his machine as though it were a pet animal. as soon as it had spit forth its shower of a hundred balls, he quickly put a pinch of[pg 160] vaseline on the piston and a damp rag over the cannon. in five minutes, a thousand cartridges had been fired. the cannon was getting warm. from black, it had changed to blue and was mottled with spots. it had to be changed. we were advancing towards the laak bridge, which all the cyclists had now crossed. as we went along, we encouraged the wounded ones who were trying to crawl along as far as there. we changed the cannon, whilst under fire. there was a bolt to draw, then a few blows of the mallet on a big key, the cannon was grasped between rags and plunged into a basin of cold water. with a hissing noise, a long spurt of boiling water flowed up-hill. whilst the chief gunner examined the mechanism of his machine and greased it, his helper drew the second cannon from its sheath and put it in its place. with a thud, it settled and, the whole operation having taken forty seconds, we were once more ready to fire.
the enemy was now coming out from werchter. i could see the lines of sharp-shooters distinctly. they were advancing in the fields of rye and beet-root.
"do you see them?" i asked.
"yes."
"at three hundred yards, mow them down with volleys of sixty, if you like, fire!"
and our hotchkiss continued its noise, which sounded like a huge sewing machine. over yonder, we saw the grey fellows tumbling over each other, running, hiding. and the balls whizzed round us quicker than ever.
the cyclists were still five hundred yards away from us in their retreat, but our cannon was again getting warm and, besides this, the extractor was dirty and[pg 161] some of the balls failed. we fell back a second time and, behind a hedge, the changing of the cannon again took place. this time we had the additional complication of changing the extractor. the enemy took advantage of this for advancing at full speed.
"quick! quick! is everything ready?"
the car fell back. a hundred yards from the bridge there was a good place for it. from there we could see for five hundred yards along both sides of the route skirting the laak. this time we were keenly on the watch. we no longer replied to the firing intended for us: it was no use wasting munition haphazard. the chief gunner to the right, and i to the left, watched the groups which arrived on the bank of the river.
rrann!... and there was a charge[6] for each group. how many fell like that! it was good firing, with certain result. and there was no hurry now, so that the cannon only got gradually warm.
the combat had been going on for forty minutes. the cyclists must have reached tremeloo. there were still the wounded ones to look after. berlaymont and i got down and picked up six or seven of them. we placed them on the chests, on the wings, on the platform, at the back, and even on the hood. this exasperated the boches, who fired on us furiously. we now made off, but on the tremeloo road, we came across about twenty poor wounded men, dragging themselves along in the most lamentable way. they stretched out their hands to us, beseeching to be picked up. it was impossible to abandon them. six volunteers of the cyclist rear-guard offered their services. they discovered a cart and an old horse which, by[pg 162] some miracle, had remained among the ruins of a farm and, whilst they were doing this, the machine-gun received certain indispensable repairs. the car then started once more towards werchter, followed by the cart transformed into an ambulance. about one hundred yards in front of the bridge, a wounded man was lying across the road. he begged to be picked up at once. we fastened him to the platform and thought no more about him, for the balls were raining down again. the boches had crossed the bridge and we had to drive them back, so that we could pick up the wounded men. we advanced slowly, giving our enemies a hellish fire. they were running from hedge to hedge, quite near to us.
lieutenant de menten, who had been taken prisoner at the beginning of the action, and was freed later on, told us about this part of the fight. the germans, two battalions and a squadron strong, dragged him along with them in the pursuit, and we came very near freeing him ourselves. for a short time, he was surrounded by the dead and he had to lie down flat in a ditch, in order to avoid sharing the fate of his keepers. we were only one hundred yards away. we had painted a gigantic 7 on our car, out of sheer bravado. a german officer told him that evening that that "cursed number seven" had killed more than two hundred men in an hour.
our provision of 4500 cartridges was coming to an end though. we began to fall back a little, especially as the balls were now coming from right and left. there were no longer any wounded men on the road, as our brave carabineers had worked well.
"good heavens!" we suddenly exclaimed "and what about the man we picked up and put at the back[pg 163] of the motor-car?" when our last volley was fired we visited him, expecting to find him in a piteous state. miraculously, he had not a single scratch more than when we had picked him up, and yet the back of the car was riddled with marks of bullets. what a piece of good luck for him and, as for us, our men were all there; we had not lost one.
during that second sortie from antwerp, we had magnificent chances of distinguishing ourselves every day. on the 10th of september, for instance, we started from rhode st. pierre with some pioneers and, slipping between german posts and patrols, we reached cumptich, near tirlemont, about ten miles behind the enemy's lines. whilst the pioneers were destroying the railway line from louvain to liége, we kept a lookout on the road. a red auto came along. it was a pipe, 12 horse-power, 1912, driven by a german soldier, and there were two conceited-looking officers in it. berlaymont seized his carbine and, at a hundred yards' distance, fired twice. each ball hit an officer straight. the car stopped short and the chauffeur held up his arms. we rushed forward, our brownings in our hands. the two officers were on the floor of the car, with their heads open.
"what a pity," said berlaymont, regretfully, "they have made a mess of the leather!"
after securing the chauffeur, we started along the road in our car. on approaching the sentinels, we called out to them: "come here, or you are dead men."
not one of the five prisoners we made attempted to defend himself. as soon as they saw the armoured car, they threw down their weapons and put their hands up. some of them knelt down and asked for[pg 164] pardon. on returning, our captured car came to a stand-still and the prisoner chauffeur repaired it with the most obsequious eagerness. the climax was that, just as we were setting off again, we heard a voice calling out: "stop, stop, you have forgotten me." it was one of our prisoners, who had got down while the car was being repaired and whom we had not missed.
that same day, the 10th of september, i had two more big fights, and was able to advance as far as blauwput, a suburb of louvain. unfortunately, this cost me the life of corporal royer, a very brave man who had already had honourable mention in his division. in the afternoon, we had the pellenberg fight, where the violent resistance of the german marine fusiliers stopped our progress.
until we reached the yser, my car was engaged on an average three times a day. it would be impossible to tell of all our skirmishes, so i will only give the most interesting episodes.
on the 27th of september, at alost, my car was sheltering in the little street of the morseel bridge, behind a barricade made of herring barrels. we had to wait there and could see nothing, whilst shells were falling all round us. suddenly, a projectile fell right on the barricade and filled our car with herrings. it was a perfect infection, and never had our nostrils been poisoned by any odour as disagreeable as that. whilst we were raging and holding our noses, a tall american fellow came up with a cinematograph photo apparatus.
"captain," he said, "i am the operator of an american cinematograph company. may i have the honour of taking views of your motor-car in[pg 165] fighting position?" we had scarcely recovered from our amazement, when a shell dropped on a neighbouring house, which immediately fell on us and on the american, in the midst of a cloud of dust and a frightful noise. with the most superb calmness, berlaymont called to me: "look out, it is always a good thing to notice the objective." he got up and began searching for the objective. just at this moment, we saw the cinema american, who had stepped back a few yards and, with his apparatus still on its three feet, was taking views phlegmatically.
between eleven o'clock and twelve, we received orders to fall back one hundred yards, in order to support the platoon of the 5th lancers, under the command of lieutenant van den elschen. it was entrenched behind a barricade of tan bales. our enemies were not visible and we were only aware of their presence by the arrival of shells. one of these projectiles broke in the window of the delhaize grocery shop. it was most providential for us, as it allowed us to lunch copiously on the verandah, free of charge, with a musical accompaniment, composed of the latest tango airs, played on the piano by lieutenant poncelet. things went on very well until another shell knocked down a chimney. as this fell on the verandah, we had to move from there. we returned to our barricade and found the cinema operator getting our horsemen to rehearse a "defence of alost." "i have only taken a bombardment, so far," he explained, "and i should like to get a real fight."
amused at this idea, the officers allowed him to direct operations. commanded in nigger french, our horsemen first repulsed an imaginary attack of[pg 166] the enemy, by fire, and then executed a brilliant counter-attack. victims were now wanted.
"some dead men now, the ground must be strewn with corpses," ordered the american.
the excitement of the troops was such, though, that he had to repeat his injunctions, in order to keep the corpses lying still on the ground until the film had finished turning. these views appeared in the daily mirror, of october 1, 1914, under the title of "the defence of alost," and have been given in all the london cinemas. my readers may, perhaps, see them later on on the screen at brussels. they will know then that, of the whole story, only the bombardment was authentic.
on the 6th of october, our motor-car came very near having a fine feat of arms to its credit. at schoonaerde, on the road from wetteren to termonde, the germans had placed a battery of field howitzers, which was bombarding our trenches on the left bank of the escaut. the armoured car 7 and the lancers were on observation about two miles away, near wetteren, at the entrance to wichelen. between schoonaerde and us, the road was only barred by the hamlet of bohemen, which was weakly guarded by the enemy. we decided to attempt a big venture. whilst berlaymont, the man who feared nothing went off by the railway line with three sharp-shooters to attack bohemen, i rushed into the hamlet at full speed with the motor-car. some carts had been placed in a way to bar the road. our car knocked them over, and we were then within six hundred metres of the enemy battery in action.
my chief gunner, heureux, opened fire. it was a thing to see the way the artillery-men, taken by enfi[pg 167]lade, came down! those who survived, and there were very few of them, cut the tethers of the horses, sprang on to their backs, and made off. we thought the battery was ours, but alas! it was not. the belgian artillery saw an armoured car in a place where there could only be boches. it opened a quick fire on us. their shells ploughed up the ground and our armoured car was riddled with shrapnel fragments. the belgians aimed too well and we were obliged to leave. half an hour was lost in telephoning to the commander of the artillery that he was mistaken. we rushed into bohemen again and saw our cannons once more. what joy it was!
but the boches had had time to cover them. to our right, fifty metres away, the hedge along the railroad was held by sharp-shooters with a machine-gun. in front of us, a farm and its kitchen garden on the road were also occupied, and we were greeted by a fearful, direct fire. i gave up my steering wheel, for when berlaymont is not there, i am the only one who can drive, and directed the fighting. handled by heureux, a clever marksman, our machine-gun spit forth what was certain death. the firing became weaker from every place on which we turned our gun. suddenly, i felt a double shock in my right arm. the boche machine-gun had just presented me with two balls. heaven be thanked, i had seen it though, and heureux silenced it by bringing down its gunners. suddenly, and without ceasing his work, heureux called out to his aid: "go on charging, i cannot do any more."
i looked and saw that his left hand had been torn off by a dum-dum ball. i had another terrible shock myself, this time in the head. i was conscious of [pg 168]falling from the car to the ground ... and then ... i knew nothing more. when i came to myself i was lying at the bottom of the car, and my gun was still fizzling. it was being worked by the second gunner. heureux, who had looked after me until i was conscious again, said, quite simply:
"now that i have picked you up, it is your turn. you must drive the car." it was by no means easy. my right arm was useless, and the blood from the open wound on my temple half blinded me. as well as i could, altering the speed with my right foot, i was able to start the car. under the fire of the boches i had, once more, to overturn the carts they had again put in place.
at wichelen, berlaymont joined us again. he was furious that we had had an armoured car fight without him. and whilst the ambulance took heureux and me off, he obtained a reserve machine-gun, installed himself in the car, all dripping with blood, and went off to kill a score of the boches who had treated his friends in such an evil way.
footnotes:
[6] a charge comprises thirty cartridges placed on a metallic band.
