RETREAT IN BELGIUM

In a Belgian headquarters town U.S. war correspondents, conditioned by months of advance and victory, got the shocking word that the enemy had broken through, that they would have to leave on the run. Somewhere on the run, LIFE correspondent Jack Belden cabled this account of the muddle and mess of retreat:

There were no regular combat units in the town at that moment, only some army engineers, medics and ack-ack officers and men who had come to try and find out what had happened to their cut-off units. In the upper-story windows of houses a few G.I.s rested rifles on sills while women civilians looked on, some with fright, some with scorn, some with amusement and some with the air of "we're all in this together."

As we stood there some colored soldiers drove up and began wrestling a pile of logs into position as a road block. It seemed amazing, but that was all there was between us and the Germans.

Into the Night. Toward dusk we left the town. Some medics who had lost their units were walking. We gave them a lift. None knew what had happened. The road was crowded with trucks. One of them was driven by a Red Cross girl who waved spiritedly to us.

Already many vehicles were going toward the rear. Gasoline supply trucks, portable bridges that we might have used to cross rivers, all things that we could use again went back so that the decks could be cleared for action. The inhabitants of the town watched these precautions with frightened faces. Many were refugees from bombed cities and now they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire and didn't know where to go.

I noticed in myself a feeling that I had not had for some years. It was the feeling of guilt that seems to come over you whenever you retreat. You don't like to look anyone in the eyes. It seems as if you have done something wrong. I perceived this feeling in others too.

The Frightened People. More people now stood in the roads, alarm plainly stamped on their faces. Our planes were swooping and diving and circling close overhead and sometimes you could hear the sputter of machine-gun fire and the sharp crump of a bomb falling in the valley behind the hills encircling the town. Once there was a tremendous crash close by, the windows rattled and a column of smoke leaped out of a small wooded hill a few hundred yards away. The people rushed for the buildings. Our blood began to race a little faster.

A middle-aged woman grabbed me by the arm and began pouring out words of broken English in a pleading, tortured voice. She wanted us to take her children, a boy aged ten and a girl aged twelve, with us. "Just a little way on the road," she said, "then you can drop them off. My husband, he's been in the resistance movement. He'll have to get out. The collaborators will report him. It doesn't matter about me. But only take my children with you." Her eyes were red and I realized she would have been crying if her need for saving her children had not been stronger than her grief. A French photographer finally agreed to take her in his civilian car.

The road was jammed with every conceivable kind of vehicle. A plane came down out of a formation and bombed and strafed the column, knocking three trucks off the road, shattering trees and causing everyone to flee to ditches.

Three Months After. We went down roads along which we had advanced to the tune of cheers and applause three months before, but now there were not many people about and they no longer looked ecstatically happy, but only glum. Many, however, gave us the V sign and waved bravely. At dusk we came to a city. The buzz of the robombs was loud and clear over the hubbub of the traffic, and we saw a trail of red fire coming across the grey sky on the darkened city. It fell with a loud clatter and flames shot up and people ran hurriedly through the streets.

It was like that all night. There must have been a buzz bomb or a piloted plane raid somewhere every five minutes. The next day in a jeep we saw the tail flame on one robomb overhead suddenly go out and then the big frame of the bomb dove down on us in perfect silence, an inhuman Moloch coming to devour us. We threw ourselves to the ground and it burst nearby, breaking all the windows but not hurting anyone. I went to a cafe where I had been the first American three months previously and was kissed and embraced by the barmaid and given free drinks of cognac. The people told me: "We can stand the buzz bombs. That's nothing. But the Germans. We couldn't stand the Germans here again."

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