Antwerpen14-18_Antwerp builds bridges ENG

THE FLIGHT OF A HUNDRED THOUSAND
“I walked through the garden, onto the road and witnessed
the continuous procession of refugees, the sheer misery of it!
Horses and carts, handcarts and bicycles sped past, ushered
by an approaching storm; flocks of slowly moving cattle and
crowds of frightened men, mothers dragging crying children
with both hands, sons transporting a lame or sick father in
a wheelbarrow, hordes of people pulling and pushing carts,
piled with a few chairs, a table, a mattress, a stove, a birdcage.
Men with worn-out shoes or barefoot, women with
crooked high heels and flowery summer hats on heads with
loose hair, absurd. I stood watching, transfixed and started
to cry. These were my people fleeing by the thousand, hastening,
their faces ruddy with exertion. They hurried like
hunted animals escaping certain, imminent death, as if the
Germans were chasing them, hard on their heels. Their fixed,
empty gaze, their heads bowed as if the sky was about to
collapse under the weight of earthly events.
The ongoing muffled rumble of German heavy artillery in
the distance. I thought of the other thousands of refugees
who at that very moment were struggling to find their way
through Flanders, heading for the sea. Half a million people
without any shelter amid the clamour of a retreating, exhausted
army and slowly progressing war vehicles.”
Diary excerpts Jozef Muls, 1914
““All shops, pubs and hotels were
closed. In this desolate landscape,
I approached the Keizerlei and
crossed the boulevard. Whiiiiiz, I
halted, terrified. There ... a mere
200 meters away from me a grenade
had landed in the middle of the
boulevard. I hurried away. As I was
about to turn into the Place Verte,
‘Refugees’
H. Prat
there was another loud thud behind
me. On the Meir, on the right before
the Vierwindenstraat, where
recently a bomb had been dropped
from a zeppelin, another projectile
fell. Shop windows shattered, women
and children ran away, screaming.
A few men were wounded.”
13