Some of the soldiers were furious and others distressed on account of the great number of comrades left on the battle-field, while they hardly made any progress against the tenacity of the Allies. Those who were not seriously wounded were not even put up in hospitals or similar buildings, as there was only room for a few, although many private houses had been turned into supplementary hospitals. In the streets and the cafés I saw therefore hundreds of men in bandages.
The condition of the civilian population was not too roseate. Most of them were away, and from those who had stayed everything was requisitioned. Staying in the town was not without danger, for two days before my visit it had been bombarded from noon to one o'clock by the British fleet, by which an hotel on the boulevard and some houses in the Rue des Flamands had been damaged.
From Ostend I went a few days later to Thourout, a townlet to the north of the centre of the Yser-line. I was accompanied by two Netherland colleagues whom I had met at Bruges. Everything was quiet there; the commander of the naval region, Admiral von Schroeder, had made himself slightly ridiculous, by informing the population in a proclamation that he had ordered the British citizens in the coastal region to leave the country, in order to protect them from their fellow-countrymen of the British fleet, who, by bombarding Ostend, had endangered their lives.
As we left through the Gate-of-Bruges towards Thourout we were approached by a small military group, a few German soldiers who escorted about a dozen French and Belgian prisoners of war. Until that moment the street had been relatively quiet, but the inhabitants had scarcely heard that the "boys" came, when each ran into the street, forgetting all fear of the "Duuts," and, breaking through the escort, they gave their "boys" an apple, or a pear, or a packet of cigarettes; so we saw a huge round of white bread fly through the air and land in the hands of one of the "boys." Such a thing touches one always, and even the escorting Germans, who at first were very indignant on account of the sudden and unexpected intrusion, left the citizens alone with a generous gesture, as to say: "Well, have your way."