GERMAN RETREAT
That morning of the 8th, then, saw General von Kluck in full retreat.
His frontal attack on General d'Esperey had failed and the Fifth French
Army had advanced. The British were at his flank, and besides, they had
been able to spare some of their heavy artillery to send to the Sixth
Army under General Maunoury, to enable him to cross the Ourcq. It is by
no means certain that even with this assistance could the Sixth Army
have silenced the terrible fire of those howitzers, but General von
Kluck dared no longer leave his artillery there, it must be taken with
him on his retreat, or become valuable booty. Leaving a few batteries to
guard the crossings of the river, the Ourcq division of the German right
retreated in good order, to rejoin their comrades who had been so
unexpectedly mauled by the British. The honor of this day was,
curiously, not to the victorious, but to the defeated army. Had General
von Kluck done nothing other than conduct his army in retreat as he did,
he would have shown himself an able commander. Sir John French and
General d'Esperey followed up their advantage. The artillery fire of the
British was good and in a running fight, such as this retreat, the light
field artillery of the French did terrible execution. The brunt of the
British fighting was at La Tretoire. General d'Esperey fought steadily
forward all day, driving the retreating army as closely as he could, but
proceeding warily because of General von Kluck's powerful
counterattacks. The fighting was continuous from the first break of
daylight until after dusk had fallen, and it was in the twilight that
the French Army at last carried Montmirail on the Petit Morin, a feat of
strategic value, since it exposed the right flank of Von Buelow's army,
exposed by the retreat of General von Kluck.
From this review of the forced retirement of General von Kluck, it will
be seen that the German right was compelled to sustain an attack at
three points, from the Sixth French Army on the banks of the Ourcq,
from the British army in the region of Coulommiers and from the Fifth
French Army near Courtacon. Each of these attacks was of a widely
different character. The result of this attack has been shown in the
summary of the three days (four days on the Ourcq) which resulted in the
British capture of Coulommiers and in the French capture of Montmirail.
This was General Joffre's counteroffensive, and it developed in detail
almost exactly along the lines that he had laid down.
The scene of the fighting across the west bank of the Ourcq was that of
a wide-open country, gently undulating, dotted with comfortable
farmhouses, and made up of a mosaic of green meadow lands and the
stubble of grain fields. The German heavy guns came into action as soon
as the French offensive developed. Tremendous detonations that shook the
earth, and which were followed by sluggish clouds of an oily smoke
showed where the high-explosive shells had struck. Already, by the
evening of the first day's fighting, there were blazing haystacks and
farmhouses to be seen, and the happy and smiling plain showed scarred
and rent with the mangling hand of war. On the 6th, a sugar refinery,
which had been held as an outpost by a force of 1,800 Germans, was set
on fire by a French battery. The infantry had been successful in getting
to within close range and as the invaders sought to escape from the
burning building, they were picked off one by one by the French
marksmen. The French infantry, well intrenched, suffered scarcely any
loss. It was in brilliant sunshine that the fire broke out, and the
conflagration was so fierce that the empty building sent up little
smoke. The flames scarcely showed in the bright light, and to the
onlooker, it seemed as if some rapid leprous disease was eating up the
building. The situation was horrible for the Germans, either to be
trapped and to perish in the flames, or to face the withering French
infantry fire without any opportunity to fight back. Less than 300 of
the occupants of the refinery won clear.
Wherever the forces met, the slaughter was great and terrible. In the
excitement and the eagerness of the first offensive, the French seemed
to have forgotten the lessons of prudence that the long retreat should
have ingrained into their memory, and they sought to take every village
that was occupied by the Germans with a rush. The loss of life was
greatest at a point four miles east of Meaux. There, on a sharp,
tree-covered ridge, the Germans had intrenched, and gun platforms had
been placed under the screen of the trees. An almost incessant hail of
shrapnel fell on these lines, and the French infantry charges were
repulsed again and again, with but little loss on the German line. But,
meantime, village after village had been attacked by the French and
carried with the bayonet, and on Sunday, September 6th, 1914, that part
of the battles of the Marne which dealt with the driving back of the
Germans to the line of the Ourcq, was in some of its feature like a
hand-to-hand conflict of ages long gone by. Yet, overhead aeroplanes
circled, on every side shells were bursting, the heavy smell of blood on
a hot day mingled with the explosive fumes, but the Zouaves and the
Turcos fought without ceasing and with a force and spirit that went far
to win for the French the cheering news that village after village had
been freed of the invaders.
When the night of that Sunday fell, however, on the line of the Ourcq,
the balm of darkness seemed to be almost as much a forgotten thing as
the blessedness of silence. There was no darkness that night. As the
Germans evacuated each village they set fire to it. The invaders
actually held their machine guns at work in the burning village until
the position was no longer tenable. The wind blew gustily that night,
and all the hours long, the Germans collected their dead, built great
pyres of wood and straw and cremated their comrades who had fallen on
the field of battle.
The next day, at this point, developed fighting of the same general
character. One of the most heroic defenses of General von Kluck's army
was that of the Magdeburg Regiment, which held its advanced post ten
minutes too long and consequently was practically annihilated. Although
the French had everywhere shown themselves superior with the bayonet and
at close infighting, even as the Germans had displayed an incredible
courage in advance under gunfire, and rightly held their heavy
artillery to be the finest in the world, in the melee around the colors
of the Magdeburg Regiment, there was nothing to choose for either side.
The lieutenant color bearer was killed, in the midst of a ring of dead,
and not until almost the whole regiment had been killed under the impact
of far superior numbers, were the tattered colors taken into the French
lines. It was on this day, Tuesday, September 8, 1914, that the British
army realizing that it had turned the flank of General von Kluck's
southern divisions sent its heavy batteries to the pressure on the banks
of the Ourcq.
A graphic picture of the artillery side of the fighting on the Ourcq was
given by one of the artillery officers detached from the British force.
"Meaux was still a town of blank shutters and empty streets when we got
there this morning," he wrote, "but the French sappers had thrown a
plank gangway across the gap in the ruined old bridge, built in A. D.
800, that had survived all the wars of France, only to perish at last in
this one.
"Smack, smack, smack, smack go the French guns; and then, a few seconds
later, four white mushrooms of smoke spring up over the far woods and
slowly the pop, pop, pop, pop, of the distant explosions comes back to
you. But now it is the German gunners' turn. Bang! go his guns, two
miles away; there is a moment of eerie and uncomfortable
silence--uncomfortable because there is just a chance they might have
altered their range--and then, quite close by, over the wood where the
battery is, come the crashes of the bursting shells. They sound like a
Titan's blows on a gigantic kettle filled with tons of old iron.
"At Trilport there is a yawning gap, where one arch of the railway
bridge used to be, with a solitary bent rail still lying across it. And,
among the wreckage of the bridge below, lying on its side and more than
half beneath the water, is the smashed and splintered ruin of a closed
motor car.
"Beyond the town was a ridge on which the French batteries were posted.
We could see the ammunition wagons parked on the reverse slope of the
hill. More were moving up to join them.
"The village beyond, Penchard, was thronged with troops and blocked with
ambulance wagons and ammunition carts.
"Through the rank grass at the side came tramping a long file of dusty,
sweating, wearied men. They carried long spades and picks as well as
their rifles. They had come out of the firing line and were going back
to Penchard for food.
"Topping the next ridge ... the hill slopes steeply down to the hamlet
of Chamvery, just below us. The battery which I mentioned just now is in
the wood on this side of it to our right. The Zouaves' firing line is
lying flat on the hillside a little way beyond the village, and behind
them, farther down the hill, are thick lines of supports in the cover of
intrenchments. It is a spectacle entirely typical of a modern battle,
for there is scarcely anything to see at all. If it were not for those
shells being tossed to and fro on the right there, and an occasional
splutter of rifle fire, one might easily suppose that the lines of
blue-coated men lying about on the stubble were all dozing in the hot
afternoon sun.
"Even when some of them move they seem to do it lazily, to saunter
rather than to walk.... It is only in the cinematograph or on the
comparatively rare occasions of close fighting at short range that men
rush about dramatically. For one thing, they are too tired to hurry; and
anyhow, what is the use of running when a shell may burst any minute
anywhere in the square mile you happen to be on?
"I walked with the company officers who were planning a fresh advance,
map in hand. They had gained the village in which we were that morning,
but at tremendous loss.
"'Out of my company of 220,' said one captain, 'there are only 100 left.
It's the same story everywhere--the German machine guns. Their fire
simply clears the ground like a razor. You just can't understand how
anyone gets away alive. I've had men fall at my right hand and my left.
You can't look anywhere, as you advance, without seeing men dropping. Of
our four officers, two are wounded and one dead. I am left alone in
command.'"
This hand-to-hand fighting for the possession of villages on the west
bank of the Marne, this heavy loss to the French troops by the German
artillery, and this sudden check at the Ourcq itself, until British
heavy batteries were sent, marks the character of what may be called the
battle of the Ourcq, the westernmost of the battles of the Marne. As
General von Kluck had divided his forces, in order to carry out the
attempt to pierce the left of General d'Esperey's army, the German
forces in the battle of the Ourcq were outnumbered almost three to one.
In spite of these odds against them, the extreme German right held for
four days the position it had been given to hold.