World War I Roll of Honour - The Clove Club Hackney Downs School

THE RETREAT FROM ANTWERP
by
ABLE-SEAMAN John F. Hopkins, R.N.V.R.
Reprinted from “The Review”, No. 85, Summer, 1915.
The article was published whilst Able Seaman Hopkins was interned in Holland.
Two days after the declaration of war between England and Germany I joined the Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve (London Division). About the middle of August we went into camp at Walmer, where remained
until Sunday, October 4th. “Reveillé” sounded at 5.30 that morning instead of at seven o’clock, as
was usual on Sundays - and to put the matter in a few words, we were told to get under way for an
unknown destination. Six hours later we marched out of camp. We reached Dover at 2.45 p.m., and
marched straight on to the Admiralty Pier, where we hung about until ten o’clock, when our transport,
S.S. “Mount Temple” (since sunk) came alongside. It was rumoured that she should have been
alongside at 3 p.m., but, owing to the presence of German submarines in the vicinity, she was unable
to do so. However, we commenced work immediately on ammunition, stores, etc., until 2.45 on
Monday morning, and, a quarter of an hour later we got under way, escorted by two torpedo-boat
destroyers.
We arrived at Dunkirk next morning, and after waiting about for eleven hours, entrained for Antwerp,
having each received a hundred rounds of ball cartridge. We reached Antwerp at four o’clock on
Tuesday morning in the rain, and “falling in” on the platform, marched away to what had been a picture
palace about six miles out. The roads were simply awful, as we found to our cost when on the retreat;
they were made of huge cobble-stones, and not too well set at that. On this part of the march we
crossed a beautiful square, with statues of marble in the centre. At this early hour crowds of people
were already out, and treated us with great kindness, giving us cigarettes and tinned meat, shaking
hands and crying out in broken English, “England for ever,” and “Long live the English king,” et
cetera, and so forth, and so on. We soon after passed an archway of old stonework. This, we
afterwards learned, was the boundary of the city. It was also supposed to be a fort! A fort!! It is a
wonder that the wind did not blow it over.
On arriving at the erstwhile picture palace we were told to get some rest, as we were going into the
trenches that night; but at 11 a.m. we were roused and marched straight away. The firing could now
be heard quite distinctly. We covered about ten miles and reached a place where the firing was very
heavy, and here we made our ammunition up to 250 rounds apiece. But we were to be disappointed.
Our marines were falling back, and we were too late to help them, so we tramped all the way back
again and into another line of trenches, arriving there at three o’clock in the afternoon. We immediately
set to to put on head-cover to the trenches, but at five o’clock we again marched off to trenches seven
miles further out in another direction, although we trudged from thirty to thirty-five miles to get there,
taking all night until half-past four on Wednesday morning. The trenches were near to Mortsell, and
we occupied them until 10 p.m. on Thursday, when our retreat began. The first shrapnel shell to find
the trenches killed Lieut.Col. Maxwell and three men, and buried five others, all of whom were dug
out alive. About 2.30 a.m. on Friday (October 9th) we crossed the Aviation Ground, and here a Belgian
soldier, marching next to me, had his left leg taken off by shrapnel.
While we had been in the trenches the shells were flying over our heads into the city, and we could
see the blaze from our entrenchment. To see the streets as we saw them the second time made one’s
heart bleed. Yet there was something fascinating in the conflagration, the slaughter and the destruction.
Now and then, as a shell found a billet in some unfortunate building, there would be a crash, and that
building would be a heap of ruins. Then there were the Belgian-American Oil Company’s building
and oil stores near to the Scheldt. Thousands of tons of oil were blazing hard, and the heat was
frightful. At each end of the building floated the American flag; but what use was that? None. Ere
we had left it ten minutes, the place crashed down in one vast, overwhelming conflagration.