noon
`` Davis had sensed the news in the occupation of Brussels long before it happened . With dawn he went out to the Louvain road , where the German army stood , prepared to smash the capital if negotiations failed . His observant eye took in all the details . Before noon he had written a comprehensive sketch of the occupation , and when word was received that it was under way , he trusted his copy to an old Flemish woman , who spoke not a word of English , and saw her safely on board the train that pulled out under Belgian auspices for Ostend . '' With passes which the German commandant in Brussels gave us the correspondents immediately started out to see how far those passes would carry us . A number of us left on the afternoon of August 23 for Waterloo , where it was expected that the great clash between the German and the Anglo-French forces would occur . We had planned to be back the same evening , and went prepared only for an afternoon 's drive in a couple of hired street carriages .