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Page 58
By four o'clock in the afternoon they had dislodged the Americans from
their first lines of entrenchment and forced them to retreat in good
order to reserve lines five miles back of the river. Between these front
lines and the reserve lines there was a stretch of rolling farm land
lined and zigzagged with three-foot ditches used for shelter by our
troops as they fell back.
By six o'clock that evening the German army had occupied this entire area
and by half-past seven, in the glory of a gorgeous crimson sunset, we saw
the invaders capture our last lines of trenches and drive back the
Americans in full retreat, leaving the ground strewn with their own dead
and wounded.
"Now you'll see something," cried Astor with tightening lips as he
scanned the battlefield. "It may come at any moment. We've got them where
we want them. Thousands and thousands of them! Their whole army!"
He pointed to the pontoon bridges where the last companies of the German
host were crossing. On the heights beyond, their artillery fire was
slackening; and on our side the American fire had ceased. Night was
falling and the Germans were evidently planning to encamp where they
were.
"There are a few thousand over there with the artillery who haven't
crossed yet," said I. "The Crown Prince must be there with his generals."
My friend nodded grimly. "We'll attend to them later. Ah! Now look! It's
coming!"
I turned and saw a thick wall of grey and black smoke rolling in dense
billows over a section of the rear trenches, and out of this leaped
tongues of blue fire and red fire. And farther down the lines I saw
similar sections of smoke and flame with open spaces between, but these
spaces closed up swiftly until presently the fire wall was continuous
over the whole extent of the rear trenches.
We could see German soldiers by hundreds rushing back from this peril;
but, as they ran, fires started at dozens of points before them in the
network of ditches and, spreading with incredible rapidity, formed
flaming barriers that shut off the ways of escape. Within a few minutes
the whole area beneath us, miles in length and width, that had been
occupied by the victorious German army, was like a great gridiron of fire
or like a city with streets and avenues and broad diagonals of fire. All
the trenches and ditches suddenly belched forth waves of black smoke with
blue and red flames darting through them, and fiercest of all burned the
fire walls close to the river bank.
"Good God!" I cried, astounded at this vast conflagration. "What is it
that's burning?"
"Oil," said Astor. "The whole supply from the Standard Oil pipe lines
diverted here, millions and millions of gallons. It's driven by big pumps
through mains and pipes and reservoirs, buried deep. It's spurting from a
hundred outlets. Nothing can put it out. Look! The river is on fire!"
I did look, but I will not tell what I saw nor describe the horrors of
the ensuing hour. By nine o'clock it was all over. The last word in
frightfulness had been spoken and the despoilers of Belgium were the
victims.
I learned later that the pipes which carried these floods of oil carried
also considerable quantities of arseniuretted hydrogen. The blue flames
that Mr. Astor and I noticed came from the fierce burning of this
arseniuretted hydrogen as it hissed from oil vents in the trenches under
the drive of powerful pumps.
Thousands of those that escaped from the fire area and tried to cross
back on the pontoons were caught and destroyed, a-midstream, by fire
floods that roared down the oil-spread Susquehanna. And about 7,000 that
escaped at the sides were made prisoners.
It was announced in subsequent estimates and not denied by the Germans
that 113,000 of the invaders lost their lives here. To all intents and
purposes von Hindenburg's army had ceased to exist.
CHAPTER XIX
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