LAST TRAIN FROM ANTWERP.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 267, 15 December 1914, Page 8

LAST TRAIN FROM ANTWERP.

FIRING ON REFUGEES. The following letter, published in ari English exchange, was received from a naval officer, and gives a thrilling account of the trip in the last train from Antwerp prior to the fall of the city. Truly we have crammed in enough adventures in our ten days in Belgium to fill a book. Our little crowd were for five and a half days and nights without sleep, and we finished up with thirty-six hours' solid marching on Belgian cobbles, during which time we covered over 100 miles, with nothing to eat but apples, raw turnips, and chocolate. Antwerp was a veritable inferno. We were two days in the trenches around the inner ring of forts. Beyond us we had the blazing city, and for forty-eight hours wo were under the hail of shell fire, the smaller guns being concentrated on the fortifications, while the "Jack Jonhsons" bombarded the city behind. Our little crowd was the last to leave the trenches, and we crossed the Scheldt on Friday morning at 4.30 and immediately blew up the bridge. In our retirement we eventually reached a station in the north of Flanders and caught the last refuge train to Ostend, at 6.H0 on the Friday night, but we were betrayed by spies, as we had only been going about an hour when our train was stopped by signal. We waited about ten minutes and then the train proceeded a bit, to be stopped again. Then a shot rang out, followed by a very hell of fire. We were surrounded by Germans, who were blazing away from all quarters, and incidentally playing a machine gun upon us, while over : head was an aeroplane throwing a searchlight upon us, The train was made- up of about sixty open goods waggons. The trucks were chock-a-block full of women and children and babies, and our party, which was composed of 650 officers and men, had had to tumble into the train as best we could, consequently we were scattered up and down the train, which was nearly half a mile long. It was pitclrdark when, we were attacked; you couldn't hear your own voiqe, so it was impossible to give any words of command. Women and children yelling and firing going on all round. It was a weird sight. Another officer, a marine, and myself, nipped over the side of the truck we were in to get to the engine to get the train started up. We fell into a live wire entanglement. Luckily for us we had thick boots and gaiters on, and we got out, though the blue flames made one jump as one stumbled over the beastly wires. We boarded the engine to find that the driver had bolted, while the stoker, a refugee, and a babyr were lying at the bottom of the engine pit, paralysed with fear. I looked over the other side of the engine to see that no one was about and found a German trying to get aboard, but my revolver did all that was necessary. We discovered that the Germans had switched the "train over into a siding. The driver had taken some beastly valve away so that we couldn't start the train'up either way, so that we were fairly in the cart. Meanwhile an awful din was going on. Presently this subsided, and an order was passed up to me to surrender as the Germans were firing on the women and children. I unbuckled my sword, and this, together with my revolver and ammunition, I laid down on the ground, awaiting the arrival of a German officer to surrender to.

I waited ten minutes, and nothing happened until I saw a party of about 150 coming along. I couldn't see who they were because it was pitch dark, so I hailed them and discovered that they were a crowd of 130 marines, 10 marine officers, and 12 bluejackets. They told me that they refused to surrender, and were going to cut their way through. I asked what the others were going to do, and they said they had been along the train, and that they wouldn't make up their minds, and it was now or never, so I said, "Right oh! I'll tail on to you." To cut a long story short, we marched like blazes for about eight hours, and reached Salzette at 4,30 on Saturday morning, when we caught train for Ostend.