But the Belgians appeared to set
great store by these playthings.
Behind each of them was a mixed group of soldiers--Garde Civique,
gendarmes and burgher volunteers. These latter mainly carried shotguns
and wore floppy blue caps and long blue blouses, which buttoned down
their backs with big horn buttons, like little girls' pinafores. There
was, we learned, a touch of sentiment about the sudden appearance of
those most unsoldierly looking vestments. In the revolution of 1830,
when the men of Brussels fought the Hollanders all morning, stopped for
dinner at midday and then fought again all afternoon, and by alternately
fighting and eating wore out the enemy and won their national
independence, they wore such caps and such back-buttoning blouses. And
so all night long women in the hospitals had sat up cutting out and
basting together the garments of glory for their menfolk.
No one offered to turn us back, and only once or twice did a sentry
insist on looking at our passes. In the light of fuller experiences I
know now that when a city is about to fall into an enemy's hands the
authorities relax their vigilance and freely permit noncombatants to
depart therefrom, presumably on the assumption that the fewer
individuals there are in the place when the conqueror does come the
fewer the problems of caring for the resident population will be.
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