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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 6, 1914)
MAGAZINE SECTION PICTORIAL SUPPLEMENT ? PORTLAND. OREGON, SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 6, 1914. BRAVED ANTWERP BOMBARDMENT TO SAVE PICTURES William A. Sherwood, an American Artist, Hid in a j Cellar Until the City Pell and Then Es- ' . A ' . - ' caped with His Paintings to" the United States, Jt.-'.T S 4 J f it " f "3 Jf-iVi-' r:-; i ' fV7- ' .-V WilUam 1 w X X pipmft,j. a 1 Hi mil s J t -1 V m 1 "vis J'i' I'll ThVOrea-t'SuLai'A'onr market day ?Sa!!a NKW YORK: It was the deter ( mlntlon to save hJ pictures Ithat first held William A. Bher wood, an American artist, whose home has been for 10 years in Belgium. 'in Jhe ltiealeged. city of Antwerp durin f th bombardment and for 10 days aft ' r the Gnnans entered the town, and then forced him and his wife, ref u- fn in a peasant cart, to seek shelter with the other exiles beyond the Dutch frontier. And It was the mysterious ; appearance of the boxes of piotures, as their cart started at last from the con quered city, that brought a quick dls- chares of German runs to hold up their departure, with the question as to whether these strangre things were r were not rifle cases. Blingiag- most of their paintings I and etchings with them, and carrying to American safety a tiny waif of a Belgian dog, Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood arrlTed a few days ago 'in New York. For 18 hours without sleep and with the most meagre supply of food and water, they hid In the darkness of a cellar In a deserted street while the j German guns battered down Antwerp's defenses. For 10 days more they lived In the ; forsaken city, helping as they could to care for the wounded and put out ; the fires from bombs and making un i ceasing efforts to get a cart to take them nd their work over the border I jwui iicjr id me uuicn Iron- ' ft.. a . A m .a i - : v. mi j m iiici.c4.cr ui ivj iniriuies i by train, occupied the best part of a , day In their peasant cart and they pent on night on the floor of a rail t way station In an abandoned Belgian bamlet, ' When they reached Holland they were cared for, along with 600 other refugees by a factory owner who was sheltering and feeding these exiles al , most entirely at his own expense. And the sight of seven floating mines as their boat made its way from the coast , line of Europe offered their last ad venture from the war. Mr. Sherwood has. brought back a record of war hap . penlngs and a few etchings of war f scene i MO and Mrs. Sherwood have lived ; for years on the Rue Rembrandt la Antwerp spending their summers at Dlxmuds and Nieuport and Bruges and . along the banks of the Yser and mak " lng their home among the Belgian peo ple. With the exception- of one other family, Flemish friends of theirs, they were the only people who remained on y the Hue Rembrandt during the siege. The two families took shelter together ' In' the cellar of Mr. Sherwood's house. ; while the jest of the street waa de serted. -At Liege Just Before Siege. 1 ! "I should never have stayed In the ; city during the bombardment, of course," jiaid Mr. Sherwood, "if it had' "; not been for the pictures. 1 was trying . to get a cart or something to get them . out of the city, and before I could suc ceed in finding any means of trans i portatlon at all the Germans came. Then, too, I was hoping' to be able to get some money in Antwerp, and I wanted, if possible, to wait for that. I or course I never did get it. I had fortunately, a little on hand, and I couldn't get any more until wa reached Rotterdam. ; I soon ceased to think of waiting for money. Just as soon as we could get our cart we left But that was lo days after the siege. "X waa In, Liege when the siege be gan," he explained, "but I Irt Immedi ately, was able to get out without any trouble, and had no adventure at all I thought at that time, as every one did, that to go to Antwerp was to take myself and my pictures to an abso lute refuge. No one believed that Ant werp could , fall. However, I did not want to keep Mrs. Sherwood in Bel gium in war time, and we began at once to make' preparations to get my pictures away. We found we couldn't. I had had some pictures In the Marche Soulier, and was fortunate enough to get them out and in my cellar before the siege. The Marche was burned. "So, when the bombardment began, we hid In the cellar, like every one else who stayed. Our neighbors stayed with us an old man, his three grownup daughters, and two small children. There was no electricity, gas, or water In the city. We had managed to store some water, of course, and fwe had a little food not much. Fortunately, there was wine In the cellar, and that helped us out. Soon Got Used to Shells. "We had packed what we could In suitcases, ready to leave everything else and run if the house was struck and burned. But as a matter of fact we soon learned when we did leave Antwerp how useless our packing would have been if we had fled. The refugees fleeing from the siege- had to go, for the most part, afoot. They couldn't carry so much as handbags very far. "At first the bombardment was ter rific, of course. But after a few hours we found that we were getting used, to it. - And soon we discovered before the end of the first 12 hours that we could calculate approximately the' dis tances of the firing range and make a pretty good guess as to whether or not we were In danger. . "At those times Mrs. Sherwood used to run upstairs and wash, when it seemed reasonably safe. It didn't seem to me that a bath was worth so much danger, and I told her she was foolish, but she would -do it. Then once, on the ' last day of the siege, I ventured out in the street when the guns .seemed fairly far away. . "You see," he went on, "the fire of -t-T W. fc-v .V- 1;'? rw . s- k , t !"c' ' -it--' ' A V Ml H1 III Hi nmimuiii lima MsfciiJiiiiiiM i (Li H mi iJHfs? rL;;: .v : ':'.': '. :M .". Hill lH ass ''i'l!!! ,j! 3- t -"'- J1- v S J -1 1 i ' i - V V Belgian SoldCers In Antwerp jost before the SUj) Antwerp Ftshmorjlers. in and deserted thoroughfare. And those 15 blocks I saw two persona one a Belgian soldier who was dement ed because of the horror he had gone through, and. who was leading his horse up and down the city street with apparently no real idea of what was going on, and the other a Flemish gardener, , who was ignoring siege guns and Zeppelins and gaizng with a sort of stolid interest at the damaged trees along the roadway. For the rest it was like, a city of .the dead. When I got to the consulate I was dismayed to find that our American consul had . gone. Later I found the Swedish and Haitian consuls, and I understood that both the Swiss and Spanish consuls me suns nuum Bccp iuq uiLy. iu ujii auiyeu. uut almost every one direction, and then sweep back in a ' left Antwerp. h'ad houses, some burning, some destroyed, some untouched but simply deserted,' the offices with the people gone, the streets tenanted only by the dogs and Cats that the refugees had 1 left in ther flight. No one knew anything. No one could find out anything. The only thing we could do was to creep back to-our cellar In the dark and wait. Of course, sleep was impossible. We stayecf there and talked when we could, and tried to cheer each, other up, and listened to the noises. And as I said, we got curiously used to it. "Then it stopped. And after a while we stuck- our heads out, so to speak, again. I left Mrs. Sherwood in the house and went out Into the street for- a little while, and it happened that I saw the German army entering the city. There were 300.000 soldiers, but only half that number actually entered the city, and were reviewed before the palace. little closer circle, and then back again in a sort of zigzag. We could bear them-coming and going, and that Is how we could guess how near the danger was, from the strength of the . "Of cburse, we were constantly ex pecting our house to be hit by a shell. Shells were falling around us all the - "The advance guard had stuck flow- Parade for Cats and Dogs. time. Finally, at about 3:1S in the morning, toward the end of the bom- noise they made. On tbe other hand," bardment, there was a, crash and the there were the wo Zeppelins dropping house rocked like an earthquake, but bombs pretty constantly. By the sec- did not fait Afterward we found the ond night we were almost worn out i shell in the garden. It had just missed sheer physical fatigue. Tl the house. "On the last day 1 felt it necessary cumference i and it made a hole one to make an effort to see the consul, meter deep. I brought home some of so. I took what Seemed to be a good the pieces of it. I'm going .to give moment and, went out In the street,, one to my mother for a paper-weight. I walked for about 15 city blocks "During ' those hours of the siege along the Chaussee de Malines, one we could not find out anything at all ers in their' uniforms, and some had succeeded in covering themselves with garlands. They marched in -with every evidence of a gala event, with the flowers to show their ' triumph. It was the most awe inspiring thing I It was two meters In cir- -y saw. ; But the most awe inspiring of the busiest streets in the city and the one along which the Belgian army had retreated. It was the worst Tit the besieged part of the city, a ruined about how things were going' or whether the city was holding out at all. When one of us would venture out, it was only to see- the empty feature was that' practically , only th lost dogs and cats were 'there to see the triumphant entry- There were so few ..human ! beings left in Antwerp. 'The conquering army marched lnte a dead' city.': Their advance was like the movement:,' of an immense' machine. The German army does not seem hu- man.' "After tn Germans came,' there Isn't much to tell. Things were qnlet. Almost all the Antwerp people had gone. The banks, offices, and most shops were closed. There, were no more Zeppelins, of t course and there . had been the machines hovering ovei us and dropping, bombs, as of course everyone knows, for days before the bombardment. We came out of our cellars and our friends went back to their own houses. The city, however, seemed peopled only by soldiers. ' Belgians Reluctant ta Leave. . "I spent almost all my own time in trying to get a cart to take us and the pictures to Holland, but Mrs. Sher wood did what she could in the city and Joined with the sisters In a bucket brigade, with what little water they ' could get, to fight the fires. Of course, there was comparatively little damage in Antwerp'. Of all the besieged towns it suffered least. The cathedral and the Musee Plantin were almost un harmed; the Rubens pictures had long since been sent away to safety, of course." . ; With mention of Mrs. Sherwood's assistance to the nuns and the nurses in the city, and with a quick, summing up of his own difficulty in finding a cart, the artist's story passes quite briefly over the 10 v days after the bombardment. "Oflflve butcher shops in his neighborhood only one, he said, was open. "It was very quiet," he . repeated. "Strangely enough, among the few Flemish families that had braved the siege there was a curious reluctance to leave when it was over. The Bel gian bourgeoise is loath to give up its home. Most of the people fled In the first terror of the Germans approach. The few. who stuck .out through the bombardment settled down when the Germans came In into a kind of regu lar life although I don't know how much longer the food can last. Our neighbors of the Rue Rembrandt re fused to leave with us, and Mrs. Sher wood and I. with the stray dog that we had picked up, departed alone. But we could not have stayed.. Thst.de 'serted city was dreadful. j- . '"We had to have three speciaf papers, pne ordinary passport and identification card, one special 'Per mis de sejour,' Issued before the bom bardment, dated September' .23, mine is, and one. card from the German army of occupation, permitting us to leave the city and pass through the German lines. We had no trouble in getting that, or In making our de parture, once we had our cart. It is rather interesting to note, though, that for the hire of the peasant cart and two slow Flemish horses and a man to drive us to the frontier, we had to pay a sum that practically equaled the price of the horses and cart in ordinary times! "But the German sentries stopped us as we were leaving, on account of the pictures. We had : them in three large packing cases, 35,. paintings. And, of course, we " had our luggage, with etchings and sketches in that. But it was the packing boxes that stopped us. There was a quick discharge of guns and our man stopped, and out ran a sentry tq demand an explanation. Were ,hose pictures, or were they rifles? He insisted that they looked like rifle cases. We thought we wou.ld have to stop and unpack everything and have a thorough examination then and there, but our papers proved so complete and so official, that the sol diers accepted them aod let us go.. We were rather startled by the guns, but we noticed that our stolid Flem ish driver never" turned a hair. He didn't so much as start at the noise of the shot. ; ' v ' . ,1 On the Dutch Frontier. "Our trip to the frontier was un eventful. . We passed many Idlers and sentries, saw s few otlMr refugees, Prom a r Antwerp Courtyard caught hints of the deserted vtnagei that we had known as prosperous little hamlets before the war But nothing happened to us. Wien night ' earns we drew up at a railway station and spent the night In the waiting room. Altogether the trip took nine hours from Antwerp to Burgen-ap- . Zoom, on the Dutch side, Just across the frontier. We had only a few' sandwiches to supply us with dinner at night and breakfast in the morn ing, and one bottle of wine. But, un fortunately, after we had opened the bottle and taken some of its contents and set 1. down on the station floor where we were camping. I upset It. That was a sad loss, for we needed It. ' We were pretty hungry as welfe as tired when we got to the border line. "And there was a strange sight. I had heard of .it, of course, but had not realized how it would look. Drawn up along the frontier were the Ger man soldiers we had passed German soldiers everywhere, of course and facing them, not two meters away, on the othe side of the border line, were the Dutch guards, "There they stood in battle array,' so close they eould have touched each' other, the Germans in the conquered territory, the Hollanders ready to de fend the neutrality of their country. Of course, there was no hostility be tween them; the Dutch were Just ready. But it was one of the most lm preset vj things I ever saw." Holland's Splendid Work. . Burgen-ap-Zoom is a small manu- ' factoring town . of 16,000 Inhabitants, just over the line that separa'tes Hol land from Belgium. It Is caring for SB, 000 refugees, and, like the rest of Holland, Mr. Sherwod points out, faces famine as the price of Its generosity. "I cannot say enough about the ' splendid people of Holland," the artist declared. "They are doing the moat wonderful work that can be Imag ined. And they need help. I am con vinced that the first thing we' ought to do Is send food, flour, to Hollands She needs foodstuffs. England can not help ljer. because England Is fight fng and Holland is neutral. We must, because we are neutral and able to help. , "Mrs. Sherwood and I were, cared for," with our pictures and our dog, in the family of a manufacturer of the. town," he' went on. "As I said, we had money enough to pay our way. But this. man. who took us into his house, was keeping 600 Belgians prac tically' at his own expense. He has them sleeping between the machines In his factory and he is feeding and caring for them. He is M. Emile Perguy, bead of one of the Industries of South Holland, and he is one of the splendid men who are doing such wonderful things now.. "I have heard a German quoted as saying that the Belgian refugees do not want to return to their homes and go back to work," Mr. Sherwood con tinned with some emphasis. "I want ta say that I know that to be false. I know the Belgians. I have, lived , with -them for more than 10 years, in the cities and among the peasants In .the country districts, and I was among the refugees. There are no more In dustrious people anywhere. They yearn to return to tbeir homes. I have heard, too, what has i been said of alleged Belgian , cruelties, and I want to add that I know the Belgians gentleness and consideration. I have known of one Instance after another of their real thoughtfulness and kind- 'ness, their gentleness to women and to people in distress. I do not beltevo these tales of so-called cruelties oa the part of the Belgians." u M ft i b: :' vT .':...- si fi . 'ft- i-T t -i , I