OCR Text |
Show SIXTEEN HOURS TO CROSS RIVER Terrific Artillery Duel Be-tween Be-tween Germans and Belgians at the Nethe Described. RUSH REINFORCEMENTS Roads Choked With Fleeing People Villages and Tovn3 in Ruins. Antwerp, via London, Oct. 8, 11 "i" m. The Germans on Saturday spent sixteen hours In a terrific ar tiller duel in an effort to ford the Nethe. The Belgians held their ground magnificently and with great sacrifices prevented' the Germans from crossing, The Germans were evidently unwilling to lose men in an aEault and decided to widen the breach !n the fortifications by bombarding bom-barding the forts between the rivers Senne and Scheldt, which were unable un-able to hold out against the steadv downpour of shells Thus the first line of Antwerp's defenses was destroyed. For the linal attack the Germans are hurrying hurry-ing 200,000 men to the scene of battlo bat-tlo from Alx La Chapelle via Brussels. No Mercy Shown. The Germans are boring a hole through the Belgian resistance like the boring of a tunnel through -a mountain, in which progress no mer-c mer-c is shown. Whatever interferes, villages, cnurches, schools and factories fac-tories are wiped out with steady precision. pre-cision. The road from Brussels to Antwerp Is one line of blackened ruins. Some of the. towns, including Termonde. have been comp'tely erased The population fled before the Germans like American settlers before a prairie fire. An endless procession of peasants and shop keepers, young, old and invalids with their chattels loaded in hand cart3 and antiquated wagons and followed by countless Children dumbly following their parents, par-ents, driving bellowing cattle are moving In the direction of Antwerp's cathedral tower They have difficult;, In avoiding the numerous military trains of guns, wagon?, and automobiles automo-biles rushing to the front, and occasionally occa-sionally they have to make way for ambulances hastening toward the city with men wounded in the fighting The refugees, on arriving In Antwerp, are cared for by the civil guards and boy scouts and taken to the public buildings and the German shops which, contrary to the accepted version, ver-sion, were not destroyed but were temoorarllv taken over bv the govern- . ment. The retugees are well fed and large numbers of the children have been taken in charge by nuns who are caring for them Shells Strike Roads The German shells continually strike the roads leading to Antwerp and the exploding shrapnel has in some cases played havoc among the peasants. The dead are left where they fall and the vsounded are placed in wagons and taken along. In the city they are placed in charge of the local police, who have hoisted red and white bombardment flags on the churches and public buildings. Priest Shrine the Dying. During the worst part of the battle on the Nthe many priests and monks were on the tiring line, attending the wounded and giving the last care to the dying. |