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Show . ; SURVIVORS OF NNKUR FINALLY ' REAGHOSTEND Fleeing Belgians Give First Authentic Account of Capture Cap-ture of Stronghold by Germans. PLACE SIEGE GUNS DURING DENSE FOG Heavy Artillery Sweeps Entrenchments En-trenchments and Demolishes Demol-ishes One Fort After Another. OSTENP, Belgium. ept. S. via London, Lon-don, o :"o p. m. The remnant of the Xamur garrison has arrived here, bringing bring-ing n story Tvhioh explains to some extent ex-tent why a stronghold believed so nearly near-ly impregnable fell. Of 26,000 men in the forts in the. environs of Xamur 12,000 have returned to Belgian soil, making the Belgian loss at Xamur in killed, wounded and miss-. miss-. ing, 14,0(10. . 1 It seems that, under cover of the severe fog, the Germans finally got their new siege guns into positions . from which they eould concentrate their fire on a single point of the Xamur defenses. de-fenses. The guns were at a minimum 1 distance of three miles from the Belgian Bel-gian trenches and consequently outranged out-ranged the Belgian guns. ; Story of Survivor. One of the survivors said: i Without troubling about the forts. : j the Germans first centered their rain ;. of steel upon our entrenchments. For ! i ten hours our brave young fellows stood : The terrible ordeal, unable to fire a i ' shot in return. Any man risking his '.. j head above the wire-swept ramparts ! j j had it blown off. Lying flat on our I stomachs, all we could do was to wait i j for the firing to end. Whole regiments i 1 were being decimated. The loss among ; i our officers was terrible, j "Meanwhile many German guns had been turned on the forts, especially t j j Alaizeret and Marchovele-tte. The men ! in them, armed with guns of much smaller caliber than the Germans, could I ; offer but feeble resistance. Maizeret, in fact) fired only about ten shots while j r ' receiving no less than 1200 shells at 1 , the rate of twentv a minute. Both Forts Surrender. 'At Marchovelette seventy-five men i perished at the batteries and both fores ' I soon surrendered. The other works, ; however, were still holding out when : 'the army left town. So much coni'i-, coni'i-, i dence had been placed in General 'Michel and his staff's ability to hold : , i the fortress that xh eventual retire-( retire-( i ment of the forces had not beeD pro- vided for. and as a result the greatest ' confusion ensued. "No provision had been made for the destruction of the stores, and these. together with the fortress, artillery and j most of the field artillery, fell into i t )i o hands of the enemy. At the cadet school alone was a store of CJ."1 Xi-UUH rations. , ! "The ambulance corps wa s a heavy ' j sufferer through lack of organization. ' 'losing loO out of ti'iO men. Manv of I ' our sick and wounded were leTt behind ( in Xamur. but such as could be moved ( : were got through to the French line and eventually were transferred to Frr-nch hospitals. Germans Get Motors. . , "Oit the retreat th" narrow road wa " linked with men, hor-jc-s and vehicles. ! i1 Jf our en or m on s ark of motor ca.rs ,onlv two were -hvc.I. for the Gcrmr. ns entered the town cloe on our he?ls. "We were doomed to disappointment after disappointment. The French had ben obliged to fall back and r-ould only v:rH us t wo regiments. These brave! v tough their way to i.s. joi n 1 ng us in greatly reduced numbers no far from Xamur. Our general had believed that the desT ru--t ion of rhp bridge ar Jambes would -o er our retreat, nut th-1 Germans, Ger-mans, moving more rapidly, cut our retreat ne,-jr Hois de Viilers, six miles trftin Xamur, where their machine guns piade a lea n -weep of severs I motors ! : iikd with H-lgian officers. At las 1 w ,-:.t our wav throng!), bi:! at a ter-! :dde lovs. "Here the Kighth and Thirteenth I -f'inipj!'-, especially distinguished them- e l - r. They lost nearly all of their ( t .' s. One of our corn missa ria t . : r a i ; ! s fell into th'; hands of the e n - " Om r yi,o 'onL i n ued their ret reat. ! er pur-ued. fvi-r ha ra?.oJ. Moreover, e ti'Mibkil riyht into the path of the t ! rem-i? retreat f'ro:n ' harlemi. anri it j i o: until we L-o to Ph i 1 1 i pnv i 1 e j hm ft.-1 troops were pulled together and re torm ed. ' T h c next -Inv and thereafter our ' r t rry l '--. 'a eecute(i j;, -oot order. I'" : hrre v. were rcrei :c- v.'nh open '"'I' ! he i n iia hi f an! s of t ov.'n t vising j , ;ih i.f.r- a not iter to give us shelter." |