THE MARCH ON ANTWERP

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 59, 7 September 1914, Page 7

THE MARCH ON ANTWERP

SEVERE ACTION AT TERMONDE GERMANS EVACUATE THE TOWN ANTWERP, 6th September. About forty thousand Germans are surrounding the villages, and have continued their movement north and northwest of Brussels for the purpose of cutting Antwerp's communications with Ostend and the coast towns. The Germans burnt the villages on the way, and there was stern fighting between Malines and Termonde; the Belgians showing great elan. When the Germans occupied Termonde, the Belgians cut the dykes, flooding the district and completely surprising the Germans, who did not expect such a sacrifice. The Germans when this telegram was sent were waist deep in the water, working heroically to pull out their guns, under a heavy fire from the outermost Antwerp forts. The Germans were losing heavily. . . (Received September 7, 8.5 a.m.) LONDON, 6th September. An Antwerp telegram states that 4000 Belgians, with field and machine guns, strongly entrenched at Termonde, fought 20,000 Germans. The latter suffered heavily owing to the delay in the arrival of guns. The Belgians, supported by Fort St. Gilles, killed and wounded a thousand Germans. (Received September 7, 9 a.m.) ANTWERP, 6th September. The Germans evacuated Termonde, burning a number of houses and blowing up the Northern Scheldt Bridge to prevent an offensive movement while the operations at Termondc were proceeding. They now find it impossible to hold Termonde without being cut off from Brussels. The incursion of Waesland apparently has been abandoned. [Termonde is a town of 10,000 inhabitants, twenty-five miles south-west of Antwerp, at the confluence of the Dender witji the Scheldt River. It is still one of the five fortified places in Belgium, although its defences are not modernised. To-day is not the first occasion the dykes have been opened at Termonde on an invading aimy. It was before Termonde in 1667 that Louis XIV. was compelled to beat an ignominious, ret feat through tho flooding of tho country.]