The correspondent of the London _Chronicle_ says:
“In ---- the stationmaster, a brave old type, and one or two porters had
determined to stay on to the last. ‘We are here,’ he said, as though the
Germans would have to reckon with him, but he was emphatic in his
request for me to leave at once if another train could be got away,
which was very uncertain. As a matter of fact, after a bad quarter of
an hour, I was put on the last train to escape from this threatened
town, and left it with the sound of German guns in my ears, followed by
a dull explosion when the bridge behind me was blown up.
“My train, in which there were only four other men, skirted the German
army, and by a twist in the line almost ran into the enemy’s country,
but we rushed through the night and the engine driver laughed and put
his oily hand up to salute when I stepped out to the platform of an
unknown station. ‘The Germans won’t get us after all,’ he said. It was a
little risky all the same.
“The station was crowded with French soldiers and they were soon telling
me their experience of the hard fighting in which they had been engaged.
They were dirty, unshaven, dusty from head to foot, scorched by the
August sun, in tattered uniforms and broken boots, but they were
beautiful men for all their dirt, and the laughing courage, quiet
confidence and unbragging simplicity with which they assured me that the
Germans would soon be caught in a death trap and sent to their
destruction filled me with admiration which I cannot express in words.”