THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE
_Friday, September 11th._ It still continues to rain much of the time.
Today it developed into a drenching, pelting, soaking downpour, which
continued all day long.
Colonel Allen, Captain Parker, and I had luncheon at the Grand Hotel.
Hall arrived with the machine at two o'clock. He had packed into it,
or tied to it, an immense stock of canned goods, biscuits, and bread,
an incredible amount of gasoline, with a heavy overcoat and small
satchel for each one of us, until the car looked more like a
commissariat wagon than a touring car. We were bidden God-speed by
Major Henry, Captain Barker, and Lieut. Hunnicutt and by Frederick
Palmer and Richard Harding Davis, when just before half-past two we
shot out from the porte-cochère into the rain, prepared if necessary
to stay away a week.
We ran rapidly to Lagny along an unobstructed route, where only a few
days ago Hall and I had continually been held up by the barriers and
troops of the defensive zone. We had then not been permitted to travel
half a mile without being halted. Today what a change! We saw no
troops at all in this defensive zone and with a thrill we thus
realized that the battle must be going favorably for the Allies.
Between the Porte de Vincennes and Lagny our papers were examined only
once, by a solitary sentry on the bridge at Bry-sur-Marne. It is
evident that the Germans have either been beaten back or have chosen
to retire from the neighborhood. From Lagny we passed rapidly to
Villeneuve-le-Comte, which was now totally devoid of troops. At Crécy
we came upon the first signs of war. Here we saw a big park of British
reserve ammunition. All along the roads were the remains of a German
field telephone line, which had doubtless been constructed about the
time Hall and I had been in Villeneuve on Sunday.
* * * * *
All day the rain continued to pour in torrents.
* * * * *
Our machine rolled over the brow of a hilltop and below us in a hollow
we saw the little village of Rebais. The road straight before us
gently sloped down to the hamlet, passing through it as its principal
street. Yesterday there had been heavy fighting in and around the
town; French troops had entered it and advanced through it under heavy
fire. There were great black holes in the roofs and walls and the
ground was littered with bits of glass and slate. The village lay very
still and motionless in the pelting rain. We glanced up each of its
lanes as we glided by, and in each the bodies of numerous dead French
soldiers lay sodden in the mud, with their red legs sticking out in
attitudes of ludicrous ghastliness. A line of ammunition wagons half a
mile long was parked at the side of the village street and the horses
were picketed in long lines in the adjacent gardens and fields.
On the right there was a level mowed field along the edge of which the
teamsters were huddled over campfires, cooking. Beginning a few yards
behind them the field was strewn with dead soldiers lying monstrously
conspicuous on the bare ground. On the far side of the field half a
mile away was a jumble of houses, trees, and fences, and here German
infantry supported by two batteries had the day before taken up a
position. A battalion of the 17th French Line Regiment had charged
across the flat field into their teeth. We were told that in this
charge they had lost fifty per cent. of their men but had gone on
undaunted, and had "got home" _à la bayonette_, capturing the position
and a number of prisoners.
We walked silently among the dead. Where the casualties had been
heaviest, we counted seventeen bodies within a circle thirty paces in
diameter. Every man of the group had fallen forward with his bayonet
pointing straight out in front of him. Some had been running with such
_élan_ that in falling their shoulders had fairly plowed into the soft
ground. They had nearly all been killed by shrapnel fire, which in
most cases had killed cleanly. We found one, however, who had been
badly mashed by a shell which had burst in the ground at his feet,
making a deep, oblong hole six feet long into which his shattered body
had fallen. The metal identification tags, one of which every soldier
wears, had not been collected. These are removed by the burying squad,
and sent home as announcers of the decease. This group had all been
so recently killed that their faces were very lifelike. One found
oneself repeating "How natural they look!" and one could pretty well
judge what sort of men they had been in life. Here was a slight
smooth-faced blond-haired boy, who must have been dearly beloved by
the women of his family. Here again a serious, kindly, middle-aged man
whose face bore a curious expression of preoccupation. I caught myself
thinking, "I should like to have known him." We found one who in his
dying agony had evidently taken from his pocket a letter which now lay
a sodden mass in his dead hand. We could not resist that mute appeal,
but picked the letter carefully from his stiff fingers to be dried out
later and delivered, if possible, to the woman to whom it was
addressed.
As one looked at all these useless, cumbersome bits of carrion which
no one in the rush of war had had time to remove, one could not but
remember how each one had been suddenly wrenched from a useful life
and in death had somewhere left a broken family. The dead do not have
the tragic expressions with which painters credit them. Those who
have been instantly killed generally wear grotesque expressions. Some
look bored--others have a silly look of surprise, as if a practical
joke had just been played upon them. These grotesque expressions are
much more frightful than could be any indicative of suffering. Those
who have died slowly are usually propped up against something in a
sitting posture, and their faces express happiness or perfect peace.
* * * * *
We passed beyond the position which the Germans had recently held.
Here beside the road was a farmer's house with a great hole in its
roof. In the door stood a very old man gazing stupidly at the
landscape. In front of his house lay side by side three dead Germans.
They lay on their backs; the coat and shirt of each had been torn open
at the neck and their bare breasts were marred by a clotted mass of
closely grouped bullet marks. Further inspection showed that their
arms were tied behind them and we knew that we were witnessing the
results of a military execution. The old man against whose house they
had been shot explained that they had been among the prisoners taken
in the charge of the French infantry the day before and that their
fate had been the penalty for what was revealed when their pockets had
been searched.
* * * * *
We cross-questioned several inhabitants of the little village of
Boissy, who told us that the Germans had held the place for five days
and had left only two days ago, on Wednesday evening. Fleeing at the
approach of a heavy force of the British, they had retired in a
northeasterly direction. We judged from the description given by the
peasants that the force which had occupied the neighborhood consisted
of a division of cavalry with a strong force of artillery. In entering
Boissy the Germans had cornered a patrol of about twenty British
cavalrymen and had killed them all, the last three having defended
themselves in a little brick house where they had been shot down one
by one. The Germans had burned this house and the two adjoining ones
in order to make sure that no more troopers were in hiding. We saw
only one other building in the village which had been damaged. The
inhabitants explained that it was a jewelry shop and that the invaders
had wrecked it hoping to find hidden valuables. We did not have time
to investigate this statement. There had been no fighting in the
streets other than the battle with the British patrol and we
considered the condition of the place a credit to the force which had
occupied it. The inhabitants, indeed, protested that all food supplies
had been confiscated but agreed that no civilians had been injured and
that no women had been molested.
As we approached Montmirail, we passed a beautiful monument, dedicated
to Napoleon, who had directed a battle from that spot in 1814, one
hundred years ago. A golden eagle surmounted a column which stood upon
a stepped base. The fields about were plowed by shells and yesterday
one shell had knocked a big chunk off the side of the column about
half-way up. Leaning against the base, in an attitude of infinite
weariness, sat a dead French soldier.
* * * * *
Much of the dismal aftermath of battle seems to be concentrated along
the highways, which are punctuated by dead men and dead horses thrown
into the gutters to be out of the way. Long trains of horse-drawn
wagons plod wearily along toward the front; the towns through which
they pass are battered and nearly deserted; the poplars which line
the roads are broken and gashed by shells, and the fields on either
side are marred by shell craters and by the trenches of the burying
squads.
We entered the shattered town of Montmirail at nightfall. Long lines
of ammunition wagons were encamped for the night just outside and the
town itself was packed with troops. The place had been for eighteen
consecutive hours under a heavy artillery bombardment. The houses were
battered, the streets were pitted by shells, and there remained in the
whole village not a single unbroken window. There had been much
fighting in the streets and the place had been alternately taken and
retaken by Germans and French.
All accommodation in the town had by one blanket order been
requisitioned for the military. We plowed our way through rain and mud
to the office of the Mayor who kindly assigned us to rooms, giving us
written orders on the owners, who turned out to be a quaint old French
shirtmaker and his wife. Hall and I went scouting around through the
place and managed to get hold of a fourteen-sou loaf of bread and two
bottles of wine which served as supper, thus saving our own precious
supplies for future emergencies. Before returning, we visited two
cafés which were jammed with soldiery, from whom we managed to glean a
lot of very interesting information. They all spoke with the greatest
respect, admiration, and affection of their field artillery, "le
soixante-quinze."
* * * * *
Provisions were very scarce. We saw a Turco, who had apparently lost
his regiment and who spoke scarcely any French, vainly trying to find
some food. He walked about through the cafés waving a one hundred
franc note in each hand and ceaselessly demanding something to eat.
* * * * *
After supper a council of war was held in order to decide upon our
course of action for the morrow. Captain Parker was eager to hunt for
a vortex of the battle where, he held, the primary decision must have
been lost and won and the fighting would have been most intense; while
the action on all the other parts of the line must have been
contingent upon the results at this "tactical center." This "focus"
could not have been to the north or west of Paris, because the great
bodies of French troops are to the east; nor was it on the battle
line nearest Paris, for everything we saw today in and behind the zone
of operations testified to the contrary. In all the actions we have so
far observed, the Germans were retiring deliberately in a retreat
evidently determined by some ulterior cause. We noted many places
where severe fighting had taken place, but in every case it bore the
unmistakable signs of being merely a hotly contested rearguard action.
We so far have neither seen nor heard of any great German defeat such
as must somewhere have occurred in order to start a general retreat,
and to force such numerous rearguard actions. A victorious German army
does not suddenly begin to retire unless compelled to do so by a
gigantic and crushing defeat at some one point; such a defeat must
mean days of losses so frightful that the beaten army is physically
exhausted and its morale shaken.
From a military point of view it was of vital importance to discover
this spot and to study the battlefield for lessons in tactics. Captain
Parker maintained that it would be more profitable to find this center
than to give way to our inclination to go forward into the actual
fighting; that if we could locate it, it would be best to stay upon
the abandoned field of the German defeat to study how the battle had
been fought. He pointed out that the opportunity would be equivalent
to being upon the field of Waterloo or Gettysburg the day after action
ceased. As a result of the conference, it was finally decided to
accept Captain Parker's contention and hunt for the battlefield of the
great and decisive French victory, rather than to turn north toward
the constant booming of cannon. We shall, therefore, continue to work
our way to the eastward toward Chalons-sur-Marne, beating back and
forth across the country and carefully covering all the ground.
* * * * *
_At the Front, Saturday, September 12th._ We slept last night in beds
which had recently been occupied by German officers and spent a very
chilly night therein on account of the cold, wet wind which blew in
through the many shattered windows. We woke to the rumbling of distant
cannon, which might more correctly be called a trembling of the air
rather than a true sound. Still hoarding our provisions, we ate a
frugal breakfast of stale bread and of tea made from the dried leaves
of linden trees. We started off at half-past seven, receiving a very
friendly God-speed from our aged host and hostess.
All morning we made our way in an easterly direction, beating back and
forth across the country in order to cover as much ground as possible.
When we turned to the north the sound of cannon became louder and when
we swung to the south it grew fainter. We studied the country
carefully and, when possible, talked with any of the Allied officers
we chanced to meet. They usually knew thoroughly the events which had
taken place in the particular neighborhood in which they had operated,
but were astonishingly ignorant of what had gone on at any distance.
What they told us was always very valuable, because it assisted us to
piece together the fabric of the campaign as a whole.
* * * * *
Beyond Vauchamps we came upon a scene where there had been heavy
artillery fighting. The fields were plowed up by innumerable shells
and many dead horses were strewn along the gutters, with here and
there a dead soldier who had fallen in the road and been hurriedly
thrown aside so that he should not hinder traffic.
The highway was elevated a bit above the level country which stretched
on either side, and at one spot we saw where two German guns had
fought from behind this slight protection. They had been placed in
holes sunk a few inches into the ground, and the loose earth had been
piled up to form a little mound in front, preventing bullets from
flying under the gun shield. Empty cartridge cases were strewn about
and a pile of unused ammunition was stacked up like cordwood. The
German guns had been in sight of a French battery across the fields
and a direct-fire artillery duel had taken place between the two. The
craters of thirty-two French shells were within twenty paces of the
emplacements and the ground was strewn with splinters and shrapnel
cases. There were several very dead German artillerymen who had
evidently been working the guns when direct hits had been made upon
the material of the battery. No limbers or caissons had been with the
guns, but a caisson had been placed in a field about two hundred yards
behind, and men ran up and down across the field carrying ammunition
in wicker baskets, each of which holds three shells. We picked up four
of these shell baskets as curiosities and managed to find room for
them in our machine.
* * * * *
As we advanced we became more and more convinced of the correctness of
Capt. Parker's theory that there had been a big focal center of the
battle somewhere still to the east of us, and that the actions along
the rest of the line of contact from Paris to Lorraine had occurred
with reference to this vortex.
It is characteristic of the limited knowledge which troops in battle
have of what goes on outside of their immediate geographical vicinity,
that we ran almost into the great battle area for which we were
searching before anyone gave us a hint of its location. It was at
Vertus that we were told by a French officer that terrific fighting
had taken place in the upland plateau to the south of us, around a
place called Fère Champenoise; that the Germans had there made their
main attack with close to a quarter of a million men; that a frightful
battle had raged, a battle in which the Germans were at first, during
some thirty-six hours, victorious, but that, with the arrival of
reinforcements, the Ninth French Army under General Foch had turned
the tide and finally routed them. The officers said that the fighting
and slaughter had been frightful; that the combined casualties of the
two sides were close to two hundred thousand on a front of something
over twenty miles and a depth of about fifteen miles. They said that
the battle area was contained roughly within a circumference drawn
through the villages of Champaubert, Coligny, Pierre-Morains,
Clamanges, Sommesous, Gourgançon, Corroy, and Sézanne.
[Illustration: "THE DEAD WERE SCATTERED FAR AND WIDE"
[Our automobile on one of the battlefields of the Marne]]
As we conferred with the officers a constant stream of reinforcements
for the French army was passing, coming from Fère Champenoise and
marching toward Ay and Epernay; regiments of infantry, ammunition
trains, caissons, transports, and cavalry, all marching endlessly
toward the booming guns to the northward.
We turned our machine to the south with a feeling of the greatest awe
at the thought of what two hundred thousand casualties must mean. We
were silent for some minutes as the machine sped along, and then
Captain Parker remarked: "At Gettysburg or at Waterloo the total
forces engaged amounted to only about one hundred and sixty thousand!"
We ran toward the slope of the plateau, passing slowly an endless,
unbroken line of transports. Beyond Bergères-Les-Vertus an infantry
brigade was resting beside the road and the tired men were cooking and
eating.
* * * * *
We tried to comprehend the battle as a whole by studying a great many
fields, any one of which would a few years ago have been considered an
entire battle in itself. The dead were scattered far and wide; and in
the fields and among the grain-stacks the wounded cried out their
piteous faint appeals. Little groups of German stragglers were hiding
in the forests, and squads of alert French soldiers hunted them down,
beating through the cover as eager setter dogs search for grouse. In
one field of about six acres lay nine hundred German dead and wounded;
across another, where a close-action fight had raged, two hundred
French and Germans lay mixed together, all mashed and ripped. Here was
the curious sight of a German and Frenchman lying face to face, both
dead, and each one transfixed by the other's bayonet.
The very birds of the air and the beasts of the field lay dead and
rotting amid the general destruction. We saw feathers and bits of
chickens and halves of cows. On one occasion Hall maintained that "it"
had been a cow, while I thought "it" was a horse, and no piece large
enough for a certain identification could be found. Of some of the
villages which had been peaceful and beautiful a week ago, there
remained now only chimneys, ashes, and bits of walls rising from
smouldering gray débris. A French village wrecked by battle looks very
much wrecked indeed, in contrast with its habitual orderly and
toy-like appearance.
I was not so horrified in viewing these ghastly sights as I had
expected, because I could not put from me a sense of their unreality.
The human mind is incapable of comprehending to the full such terrible
happenings. One kept endlessly saying to oneself: "Can all this which
we are seeing really have taken place in this once quiet French
countryside, almost within the suburbs of Paris? It seems
impossible--unbelievable!"
* * * * *
In the little upland village of Clamanges was a field hospital which
had been established by the Germans when they first occupied the place
on the night of September 7th. They had held it until their retreat
on the 10th, when their retirement was so precipitate that they had
been unable to take with them their wounded.
In this war it is the custom to convert the village churches into
hospitals. The chairs and benches are thrown out into the graveyard
and the floor is covered with straw upon which the wounded are laid in
long rows extending the length of the nave. The altar is converted
into the pharmacist's headquarters and bottles and medicaments are
piled thereon, while bandages, for want of room, are sometimes hung
upon the statue of the Virgin, who has, in this unique service, an air
of sublime and compassionate contentment. An operating room is usually
established in the vestry or in the Parish House and a Red Cross flag
is hung from the steeple. Any shell holes in the roofs and walls are
stopped with sections of tenting. As we approached Clamanges, we
detected a sickening, subtle, sweetish odor which crept stealthily to
us through the air and filled us with an insinuating disgust. The
Colonel said simply, "That is gangrene."
The streets of the village were muddy and littered, and there were
innumerable ominous flies everywhere. The town was crammed with
German wounded. In the church long rows of them, touching feet to head
and arm to arm, so that the attendants had to step gingerly between as
they made their slow way about. The neighboring peasant houses were
packed full with the overflow. In the halls lay the bodies of men who
had died of gangrene, and as no one had time to attend to the dead,
the piles of them grew and increased. We were told that there were
thirteen hundred wounded in the village, among whom labored sixty
attendants. They were all severely wounded, since the Germans had
dragged with them all their slightly wounded, these being good assets.
What had once been a little rose garden was piled high with a gigantic
heap of bloody accoutrements which had been taken from wounded men as
they were brought in. Under a tree in a corner of the churchyard a
surgeon had set up a big kitchen table which he used for operations;
the ground underneath was black and caked. In a near by corner of the
church walls was a great pile of boots and stained clothes which had
been cut from shattered limbs, and I expect one might have discovered
even more ghastly objects had one ventured to turn over the rags. The
attendants were nearly all French, although two German doctors and
several German orderlies had stayed behind with their wounded. All
worked heroically to cope with their great task.
In the rush of battle it had been impossible to obtain food for the
wounded, so that for days these men had gone hungry, and one heard the
agonizing sound of dying men crying piteously for bread. The French
attendants themselves went hungry in order to give their charges such
small pittances of food as were obtainable. We watched an orderly who
entered the church with a single loaf of bread which had just been
secured and which was to be divided among several hundred wounded. He
used a great knife as if he hoped to make up for the smallness of the
supply by the largeness of the implement. Slowly and with sober care
he cut slice after slice, each one so thin that the light shone
through it. Every head was turned toward him and each burning pair of
eyes was fixed upon the precious bread with an expression of animal
dumbness, which reminded one of the intent eyes of a hungry dog as it
watches a hoped-for morsel. As he advanced step by step, the wounded
stretched up shriveled hands, or propped themselves on one elbow to
make more appealing gestures, their faces all contorted by the pains
the movement caused them. They made no sound, for their attention was
too intently fixed upon that bread. One, however, who had been
overlooked, burst into screams and wailings until the mistake had been
properly remedied. We Americans held a Council of War and unanimously
decided to contribute our jealously hoarded supply of provisions; we
thereby became as angels in the eyes of those poor creatures. A French
attendant remarked as he handed a sliver of our only loaf of bread to
a shattered man: "Il va mourir tout à l'heure, mais cela lui fera
grand plaisir en mourant!"
The dying are frightful sights, and parts of them are often already
mortified, as they lie in the straw, entirely occupied with breathing.
They breathe eternally little short breaths, a hundred or a hundred
and ten to the minute, like some sort of pump. They wish passionately
not to die, and yet they know with desperate certainty that they are
going to die. They lie down there in a tiny, little black hell of
their own and fight with all their might and main, feeling that they
will die instantly if they skip one little short breath. (I was going
to say they fight with all their soul and body, but they no longer
really possess either of these). They have no time to speak, or
listen, or move, or be helped, as every particle of energy must be
used for the next respiration. A jumbled heap lies in the straw
covered with a blanket to keep off the flies. An attendant looks at
its side in search of the fluttering little pulsation of breath. If it
is there, "he" is living; if all is still, "it" is dead, and they
carry it out and dump it in the hall with the other bodies.
* * * * *
The little village of Ecury-le-Repos had been deserted by every one
but its Mayor, who mistook us for Germans, and as such faced us
bravely and with dignity. He very correctly refused to believe that we
were not of the enemy until he had examined our papers. His village
was not a pleasant sight. He said that it had been taken and retaken
many times and that there had been fighting in its streets as recently
as yesterday; its houses were battered and rent by shells and many
had burned down and still smouldered; no earthquake could have ruined
them more thoroughly. The narrow village streets were littered ankle
deep with a muddy, rotting pot-pourri in which one detected broken
glass, bits of brick, cartridges, roof slates, broken bottles, shreds
of clothing, shells, fragments, shrapnel cases, and kepis. Dead men
lay in the gutters, covered with filth to such an extent that one
almost failed to recognize what they were.
In their last retreat the Germans had dragged their desperately
wounded into halls and doorways in order that they might be out from
under foot, and there they still lay. Half of them were mercifully
already dead. We looked into one hallway only. Here amidst a stifling
stench, five Germans were propped up; three were dead and the other
two barely alive; all were covered black with flies and the living and
the dead were eaten by white, weaving masses of maggots.
Ecury-le-Repos is situated in a little circular hollow, with elevated
table-lands all around. Here where the table-lands begin to dip down,
the Germans had defended themselves against the advancing French. As
they faced southward toward the oncoming enemy, they had the village
in its cup-like hollow at their backs. At one point German infantry to
the number of about two hundred had been placed on the crest facing
across the bare level plateau, while in front of them some two hundred
and fifty paces distant was a pine wood through which the French were
advancing. The Germans had evidently had no time to entrench but had
quickly lain down in skirmish order in the outer edge of a potato
field; each soldier had then pushed up in front of him, as protection,
a little heap of potatoes and loose earth. A hundred paces to the
right of this German skirmish line, two mitrailleuses had been
skillfully thrust forward some fifty yards in advance, and concealed
in small trenches hurriedly dug. They could thus fire across the front
of their own infantry and take in the flank any French who advanced.
This action was one of a series which had taken place along this line
of hills. The German flanks were not unprotected, but owing to the
fact that the country was much broken and obscured by woods, such a
force would be partly hidden from its neighbors to the right and left,
and largely independent in repelling any attack made against it.
A body of French infantry three to four hundred strong had advanced to
the edge of the woods, facing the Germans, and had there taken up a
skirmish position. The opposing bodies had then fired at each other a
collective total of about twenty-five thousand rounds across a
perfectly flat field. We were able to estimate the number of men
engaged on either side from the impressions which their feet, elbows,
and bodies had made in the soft earth, and we could judge how many
rounds per man had been fired by counting the little piles of empty
cartridges which had accumulated beside each rifleman. When we arrived
upon the scene the wounded had nearly all been removed, but the dead
were still untouched, and we were able to see that, as a result of
this fusillade of twenty-five thousand rounds, only three Germans and
six Frenchmen had been killed outright.
After this rifle contest, the French had made a bayonet charge across
the open. The Germans had fired until the French had advanced about
half way and had hit a score, after which they temporarily ceased
firing and the French then promptly "charged home." The two German
mitrailleuses were unperceived by the advancing French, and as the
French passed them in flank, the mitrailleuses opened fire; at the
same moment the Germans suddenly fired a scattering rifle volley.
Attacked in front and on the flank, every Frenchman but one was hit,
and sixty dead still lay in a row across the field as if cut down by a
mowing machine. The sole survivor of the fatal cross-fire was a boy
with a tiny black moustache. Undaunted, he had charged alone in among
the Germans and had received many bayonets in his heroic body. He lay
on his back among the German cartridges fifty yards ahead of the row
of his dead comrades.
Behind the crest of the plateau we could see the emplacements of four
guns at intervals of about forty yards, but they had not been used in
this engagement and may have been shelling some more distant
objective.
Before leaving this field we gathered a quantity of potatoes and put
them in the German shell baskets which we had picked up earlier in the
day, in order that our gift to the field hospital might not leave us
totally without food. We felt rather unhappy at not being able to pay
for them, but "à la guerre comme à la guerre."
* * * * *
Just outside of Fère Champenoise on the road running west toward
Broussy-le-Grand, we came upon the scene of an action in which the
casualties had been exceedingly heavy. The neighborhood was absolutely
deserted and as the wounded had been removed and there were no
peasants about we could find no one to elucidate for us what had taken
place. The action was not easy to unravel and the following
conclusions were unverified by any eyewitnesses.
We, however, judged by the condition of the dead and other
circumstantial evidence that the fight had taken place at the very
beginning of the great battle--that is, on the morning of Tuesday, the
8th, when the French were slowly pushed back from the vicinity of Fère
Champenoise. The road ran through the middle of an open field, with
heavy forests on either side, some three hundred yards away to the
north and south. A French regiment had evidently taken up a defensive
position to the left of the road and parallel with it, thus facing
the woods to the north and some four hundred yards away. These woods
were held by a regiment of Imperial Guard and a battery of artillery
had been placed some three hundred yards behind them. The Guards had
advanced one hundred and fifty yards into the open and then formed a
firing-line. In some inexplicable manner they had accomplished this
manoeuvre without casualties.
The two firing-lines were thus facing one another across two hundred
and fifty yards of open field; the men lying shoulder to shoulder were
plainly visible to their opponents. The German firing-line was marked
by nine dead. The shooting of the Guard was excellent and thus in
marked contrast to the poor shooting of other German organizations
which we had observed. The French position was marked by more than
three hundred dead, and the roots and lower branches of some pine
saplings near by were riddled with bullets; indeed, some of these had
actually been cut down by rifle fire, and I estimated that there was
on an average at least one bullet for every two square inches of bark.
Nearly all the French must have been put out of action before the
Germans finally charged, for the latter had only some twenty men
killed in crossing the open to the French position. This is such a
small loss to suffer when pushing home a bayonet charge, that the only
explanation would be that few French were left to resist this final
dash. In one place there was a pile of eleven dead Frenchmen who had
evidently been killed in a desperate last stand.
Throughout this action the French had manifestly stood their ground
very stubbornly, despite desperate losses, and had at no time broken
or retreated. There were only ten dead behind their firing-line and
these had been killed with the bayonet while fighting in the open.
Another French regiment adjacent to them, in some woods farther west,
had suffered no less heavily, and the woods were here literally dotted
with the bodies of the dead. Our conclusion was that all the Frenchmen
had been put out of action. It should be remembered that the ratio of
wounded to killed is at least four to one. Colonel Allen said that he
could not imagine worse destruction than these two regiments suffered.
Evidently it was part of the price the French army so willingly paid
for their great victory.
* * * * *
We followed along the Petit Morin and the marshes of St. Gond. Here
not far from Soizy-aux-Bois had been a furious bayonet fight in which
a French colonial brigade had carried the German positions. At one
point a regiment of Turcos had advanced across the Petit Morin and
charged to the bare hill toward a long well-made trench held by a
battalion of German infantry whose fire had not deterred them. As the
Turcos closed in, the Germans jumped out of their trench and re-formed
in a line behind it, but broke at the first shock of the Africans, who
came on screaming, their knives and bayonets much in evidence. A scene
of frightful carnage ensued as the rout spread along the hill. The
Turcos chased the Germans over the fields and through neighboring
woods, killing them right and left. The total casualties in the
neighborhood must have been more than three thousand, the Germans
being much the heavier losers.
I have read of such bayonet fights, but have always doubted their
possibility in modern war. I have supposed that in close-range
fighting a few men might be bayoneted, but that the majority of the
casualties would be from gunshot wounds. In this mêlée, however,
most of the wounds were inflicted with the bayonet, and frightful
wounds they were. Many on both sides had been pierced through the
face, neck, and skull. The head of one German officer who had not
fled with his men, but had bravely fought on single-handed, had
been completely transfixed by a bayonet, which had entered through
the eagle on the front of his helmet and passed through his skull
and out behind.
[Illustration: THE COMMON GRAVE OF NINE HUNDRED DEAD NEAR
SOIZY-AUX-BOIS]
* * * * *
After passing through many scenes of horror, we arrived at the castle
of Mondemont which is near Allemant, and caps the summit of a steep
wooded hill overlooking the marshes of St. Gond. It was a Louis XV.
château, but is now a mass of shattered ruins. Around it had been
elaborate gardens with many paths, alleys, carp ponds, flower-beds,
hedges, and walls. From its elevated position it commanded the valleys
beneath. It had without much difficulty been captured by the Germans
as they advanced southward, and when they later retreated to the north
again they had left here a rearguard to hold back the victorious
French.
All through the disastrous afternoon of Wednesday the 9th, these
Germans had defended Mondemont against a furious cannonade and in the
face of infantry assaults which, in some cases, had to be repulsed
with the bayonet. Meanwhile, the main German armies retreated many
miles until on Thursday morning this heroic rearguard found itself
hopelessly surrounded on all sides. The French commanders summoned the
place to surrender, explaining that further resistance was madness,
but were met by a firm refusal, whereupon the Germans were subjected
to a most terrific bombardment by cannon, large and small. In all at
least ten thousand shells were fired at the château until it was
reduced to a pile of rubbish. Even the garden walls remained standing
only in isolated spots, and the surrounding forest was so completely
wrecked that great boughs and whole trees lay criss-crossed in an
inextricable tangle.
Near the château there was a field several acres in extent and in it
alone we counted about a thousand craters which had been made by big
shells. The road which passed in front of the château was full of
great holes twenty feet in circumference blown out of the solid
macadam. After this bombardment, a desperate infantry assault rolled
up the hill and captured it, but only after a frightful mêlée in
which the defenders fought and died to the last man. I noticed a
shutter remaining upon one window of the château which had been
pierced by fifty-two bullets. By a singular chance there was one room
which had been little damaged. In it as we entered there stood a table
at which the German officers had been eating when interrupted by the
final attack; their knives and forks lay on the plates, which still
held meat and carrots, partly eaten, and wine half filled the glasses;
two of the chairs had been hurriedly pushed back from the table, while
a third, overturned, lay upon its side.
* * * * *
_Sunday, September 13th._ We spent the night at Bar-sur-Seine,
sleeping in the hallway of a little hotel, and next morning went to
the headquarters of General Joffre which, during the battle, were at
Châtillon-sur-Seine.
* * * * *
We returned to the battlefields in the neighborhood of Fère
Champenoise early in the afternoon.
* * * * *
We entered Fère Champenoise for the second time after dark, meaning to
spend the night there. The town was packed with transport wagons and
troops. All the houses were dark, the only illumination being from
lamps on wagons and automobiles which stood in the market-place and
along the main highway through the town.
It had rained nearly all day and was still raining, and although we
were loath to sleep outdoors or in the automobile, we at first saw no
possibility of finding lodgings elsewhere. Captain Parker and I left
the machine and started to reconnoitre through the side streets. The
rain, the low-hanging clouds, and the high walls of the houses, all
combined to make the bottom of the deep narrow streets blacker than
any blackness I have ever experienced. The darkness was so dense that
it seemed to have body and solidity, and one walked as if totally
blind. The streets were alive with invisible soldiers, whom one heard
breathing in the damp darkness and with whom one continually collided.
High above the roofs of the houses a distant glow was reflected upon
the falling rain by fires where they were burning the dead.
Few of the inhabitants had yet returned to the town and we were unable
to find anyone who could tell us where to locate the Mayor. All the
houses were tightly shuttered and nearly all were empty, though
occasionally a faint suggestion of light showed through the crack
under the door. When we beat a summons on such an entrance we never
gained anything more satisfactory in the way of a response than a
gruff and muffled statement that "la maison est déjà toute pleine de
soldats." We persevered, however, and our efforts were finally
rewarded, for we at last met an old woman to whom we could explain our
dilemma. She seemed interested in our plight and, pointing to a man
who was approaching and whom we discerned by the faint light of a
dingy lantern which he was carrying, said: "Voila mon patron. Je lui
expliquerai ce que c'est!" A whispered conversation followed, and then
we were introduced to M. Achille Guyot, one of the leading citizens of
the town, a champagne manufacturer of prominence and a man who proved
to be a splendid example of French fortitude and chivalry.
In the darkness we groped for each other's hands, and M. Guyot, with
the greatest politeness, said that he would be charmed to have us
sleep beneath his roof. He apologized because he had little but the
roof to offer since "Les Allemands ont tout bouleversé." He suggested
hesitatingly that we should also sup with him before retiring, and
again apologized, saying: "Les Allemands ont tout pris." We remarked
that we possessed a great many potatoes and would gladly contribute
them to increase the bulk of the repast. This greatly relieved his
mind, as he confessed that he had almost nothing to offer, but since
we had so many potatoes they would be gratefully accepted.
We followed him to his residence, which proved to be a very large
mansion with a great garden in front and a larger one behind.
As we entered the house the rays of the lantern revealed a most
extraordinary sight. All the villagers who had remained in town agreed
that this house had been occupied by German officers and that in
leaving they had carried out much loot. The Teuton taste has been
chiefly for enamels and lingerie. The interior of the house looked
more like a pig-sty than a human dwelling. The Germans had broken all
locks and emptied the contents of all bureaus, closets, and desks upon
the floor, the more easily to pick and choose what they wanted. The
floors were covered ankle-deep in the resulting litter which was
composed of everything from lace to daguerreotypes, from bric-à-brac
to hosiery. The relics and treasures of past generations of the
owner's family carpeted the house, until each room seemed in a worse
state than the last, and the whole was altogether a most superlative
mess. M. Guyot had shoveled paths through the different rooms as one
shovels through several inches of newly fallen snow.
We stood in amazement that anyone could so completely have turned
upside down an orderly house. As an example of absolute disorder, the
dining-room was a veritable work of art. The German orderlies had
evidently prepared and served four or five meals to their officers.
Each time they had set the table with fine linen and old china and
then as soon as the repast was over had taken up the tablecloth by its
edges and corners and had thrown it with the china, bottles, linen,
tableware, dirty dishes, and remnants of food, into a corner of the
room. At each succeeding meal the process had been repeated with a new
setting of china and fresh linen from the nearly inexhaustible
supplies with which the house was furnished. This was housekeeping
reduced by German "efficiency" to its simplest terms. The same
"efficiency" had been employed in the kitchen where each meal had been
prepared with a fresh set of cooking utensils which, after use, had
been piled up under the tables and sinks, together with such débris as
potato peels and coffee grounds. Perhaps a good housekeeper would have
been most disgusted by the condition of the kitchen; to me the
dining-room, where the post-mortems of meals were added to the results
of pillaging, seemed the more shocking.
The house contained a dozen large bedrooms and all the beds had been
slept in by Germans, some of whom had not taken pains to remove their
boots. M. Guyot told us we might sleep where we chose and showed us
where the fresh linen was kept, apologizing for the fact that we would
be obliged to make up our own beds.
He introduced us to three French aviators who were already quartered
in the house and who came in as we were preparing to depart for
supper. They were Captain B----, Chevalier de la Legion, Lieutenant
the Vicomte de B----, and their orderly. The officers immediately took
possession of the lantern and conducted us out into the gardens to
behold the piles of broken bottles which the Germans had strewn
about. They informed us that these were some of the remains of fifteen
thousand bottles of champagne which had been taken by the invaders
from the warehouse cellars of our host alone. M. Guyot had not
volunteered this information, but now confirmed that fact and added
with simplicity that his champagne business and the prosperity of his
house would be much curtailed for some time to come.
Our host's residence was in such disorder that he suggested that the
supper table should be laid at the house of one of his employees who
lived near-by in the village, and we all started together through the
darkness, taking stock of our provisions as we walked. The French
officers had tea and two loaves of bread which they had obtained from
the Commissariat; M. Guyot, in the expectation of having guests, had
managed to amass three pigeons, five eggs, and several tomatoes, and
we Americans excavated such endless quarts of potatoes from our
automobile that the Frenchmen amidst roars of laughter had cried
"Assez! Assez!"
Our host and his friends decided that the repast should be called a
dinner and should be given in honor of the new France and of the
glorious victory just won, the first to rest upon the French arms in
more than sixty years. What more fitting, they asked, than that we
neutrals should witness this celebration? The Vicomte de B---- busied
himself with reciting the menu: entrée, omelette parmentier; game,
pigeon rôti; plat de résistance--pommes de terre Marseillaise; Salade,
tomate--not to speak of toast and tea. M. Guyot hinted darkly and
mysteriously that he would attend to the wine list; we should have
laughed at this had we not realized that a wine merchant who has lost
his entire store of wine is not a fit subject for jest.
When we took our places at dinner, our host sat at one end of the
table and Colonel Allen at the other. The former then explained that a
little cellar where he kept his most precious wines had been
undiscovered by the invaders and that the wine list would include the
precious champagne of '93 and a very old Bordeaux. His aged employee,
who had served the meal, then entered amid loud acclamations, her arms
full of bottles, and we drank to "La France" in Bordeaux of the color
of a ruby.
The table was set with wooden-handled knives and forks, as no others
remained, and was lighted by candles set in bottles and broken
candlesticks; no gas, electricity, or kerosene having survived the
invasion. The French aviators had in their possession five spiked
helmets which they had taken as trophies from the heads of dead
Germans. It was suggested that since all ordinary means of lighting
had been destroyed by these same Germans, their casques might
fittingly be used as candlesticks, and each bear a taper upon its
point. This suggestion was about to be put into effect when M. Guyot,
whose business had been so recently ruined and whose house had been
ruthlessly pillaged by these invaders, quietly made objection and said
that it was not fitting or proper that the headgear of fallen soldiers
should be used as candelabra.
* * * * *
_Monday, September 14th._ One's respect and affection for horses is
greatly increased after seeing them in war. They are there so
essentially necessary. They share so patiently and faithfully on
almost equal terms the good and ill fortune of the men; they work with
their masters, go into battle with them, and the two die side by
side, killed by the same shell. It is a stirring example of unity to
see men and horses straining and striving and pulling together to get
a gun out of difficulties. The horses do not understand what it is all
about and going to war was not of their choice, but the same things
may usually be said of the men beside whom they live and die.
The feeling which the French soldiers on the firing-line have for the
Germans is very different from the bitterness one finds in the
civilian population of France. We have heard more than one French
soldier say in a voice tinged with admiration, "Ah, ce sont de bons
soldats!" At the front and in the trenches one gets down to basic
principles and realizes that "the other man" is a fellow human being
and not something with horns and a forked tail. The French soldier is
grimly determined to go through the war to the bitter end and to
accept nothing short of a complete victory, but at the same time he
realizes that this mutual slaughter is indeed a sorry business. I
shall never forget the face of a serious French Territorial soldier of
forty with whom I spoke today. He was one of a burying squad on the
scene of the charge of the African brigade near Soizy-aux-Bois. Nine
hundred dead were being buried in one big trench and as I came to
inspect it, my Territorial and a comrade were about to pick up a dead
German who lay face down in a muddy field, with arms outstretched. A
hundred others lay close about us. I offered the Territorial
cigarettes and, as he took one, he indicated the field about us with a
sweep of his arm and said sadly: "If Guillaume could have foreseen all
this, do you think that he, one man, would have begun this war?" And
he looked down with an expression full of sorrow and brotherly
compassion at the dead German who lay at his feet.
* * * * *
In the four days of our trip we have had innumerable punctures and six
blow-outs, in consequence of which we were finally forced to return to
Paris today. The Germans raided all the wine cellars throughout this
whole region and when they retreated left broken bottles along all the
streets and roads.