SURRENDER OF A KING

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4487, 1 October 1940, Page 1

SURRENDER OF A KING

LEOPOLD’S ACTION DESCRIBED

A Belgian senior officer who saw King Leopold on Sunday night, only a few hours before the fatal decision was taken, and who succeeded in reaching England after the capitulation of the Belgian Army, made the following statement:Nothing in the attitude of the King or in that of the Belgian troops gave any hint that capitulation was to be expected. As liaison officer with the French northern army, I saw the King almost every day at General Headquarters. He was obviously much distressed by the sufferings of his people, but he was thinking like a soldier. The last time I saw him —about 8 p.m. on Sunday—he asked me what I thought of the situation, and in the remarks that he made there was nothing to give me the impression that he was going to force the Belgian Army to surrender. At that moment, in spite of the gravity of the situation, the idea that the Belgian Army would have to give up the struggle would not have occurred to anyone. Like the other Belgian officers, I could hardly believe the news when it spread like a trail of gunpowder the next morning. Officers, soldiers, civilians—everybody was thunderstruck; for everyone preferred the fighting and the bombing to submission in the face of the invader. What happened afterwards I cannot say, as I immediately left the Belgian zone to avoid falling into the enemy’s hands. ARMY WITHOUT TANKS I took part in the campaign of 19141918 (the officer went on to say). This one was more horrible. Three weeks ago we had something like 750,000 soldiers, 400,000 of whom were front-line combatants. When the last battle was being fought we had no more than 200,000 men left to send into the front line. On one day we lost four colonels. Our front, on the left flank of the Allied armies, was about 80 miles long. It began at Heyst, on the Belgian coast, one mile north-east of Zeebrugge, followed the line of the canal draining the Lys as far as its junction with the river, and then turned sharply up the Lys to the region of Menin. The situation was grave because we had hardly any of our 300 aeroplanes left and our army could not be sup-

plied by sea, as could the British Expeditionary Force and the French northern armies. Moreover our army, designed for the defensive on fortified lines, possessed no tanks. All we had were light armored cars. At the time of the last battle we still had food and munitions, but our troops were tired and we had no reserves left. But, 1 repeat, the morale of our troops—who did not know that they were encircled —was excellent. I never heard anyone say, “Why didn’t we have tanks and aeroplanes?” All the Belgians knew that a small country, when it maintains a big army and fortifications, has not enough financial resources at its disposal to build tanks and aeroplanes. The factors which made the position of the Belgians particularly difficult in the last few days may be enumerated in the following order: A very extensive front; the absence of important obstacles; the activity of the enemy aircraft; the destruction of the Belgian Air Force; the lack of reserves; and fatigue of the troops. In spite of the inferiority of their material our troops fought even more valiantly than in 1914. They never retired on their own initiative, and whenever it became necessary to rectify the line they fell back in good order. The nearer they approached to the sea, the more seriously was the military situation complicated by the refugee problem. Hundreds of thousands of Belgians in Flanders were exposed to incessant bombing by the German Air Force. The inhabitants and the refugees spent the daytime in the fields and returned at night to sleep in the cellars of the houses. All the activities of normal life were suspended. Civilians passed the time in watching the sky. At Poperinghe, which, like Ypres, is almost entirely destroyed, 200 civilians were killed in a day. At Ypres there were only five doctors, and the refugees were so numerous that they had to sleep in the corridors of private houses. At Ostend the quays were burned, the maritime station virtually wiped out, and certain quarters of the town, including the Rue Royale, were ravaged by fire. Bruges was spared. According to a few Belgian soldiers who were at Liege, and who succeeded in making their way through the territory that has fallen into German hands and rejoining the Belgian Army, the German occupying forces are still very small.