The camp of Mailly was a busy place. At the aeroplane sheds the
biplanes and Blériots were constantly going and coming, circling in
the air, or making ready in long rows upon the level field. The vast
plain was filled with troops of all sorts in seemingly inextricable
confusion: chasseurs, on horseback, in pale blue tunics, the Alpine
chasseurs, with drooping blue _berets_ on their heads, and leggings;
cuirassiers with their breastplates and long horsehair plumes, and
zouaves with embroidered jackets and baggy red trousers. The Twentieth
Regiment, tattered and tired, with many heads bandaged and many with
feet through their shoes, dusty, hollow-eyed, marched past, not yet
too despairing, as fresh troops greeted them, to cry in answer “_Vive
la France!_” They were not boys now, they were soldiers tempered in
the crucible of war. And among them marched Georges Cucurou, with a
Prussian helmet tied to his knapsack with a shoestring—a Prussian
helmet with a hole through its brass front!
Already rumors were flying fast from column to column. Why this
concentration of troops? Why this wide circle swung around the camp of
Mailly? _Mon Dieu!_ could it be that they were to retreat no longer?
That, at last, they were to make a stand? A hope like a gaining fire
sprang up and swept from man to man.
It was early in the morning of Sunday, September 6, that on the
heights south of Mailly the regiment was assembled for review. To
the accompaniment of an incessant, raging bombardment from the German
cannon, the colonel read aloud this message from General Joffre,
Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces:
_Children of France, the hour of the great battle has arrived! Lift up
your hearts! If you wish your Country everlasting honor, let every man
die at his post, if necessary, rather than surrender another inch of
ground, and the victory will be ours._
It was not Gallic sentimentality now. It was the voice of a leader who
wasted no words.
There was a shout of rejoicing—“_Vive la France!_” Emotion swept the
ranks and men wept without shame. The tremendous suggestion put into
those thousands of minds had a terrible potency. Georges said that
morning he felt as if he were intoxicated; he grew suddenly like a
giant. It seemed as if nothing on earth could possibly resist them, now.
Bread and biscuits were handed out and the Twentieth Regiment was
hurried to a wood two miles away. Already they had begun to move
northward. But again it was their fate to be held in reserve, while the
brunt of the attack was given to other troops. The Twentieth was held
in the woods all day, all night, while the shells rained in from every
direction. Most fell in front or behind, but occasionally a “_marmite_”
would hit the column with devastating fury, and send its mutilated
victims flying. There was nothing for it, however, but to stay and stay
on, till the last man was killed if need were. Whatever happened, the
Germans must _not_ get by!
At dawn, they advanced to the edge of the woods; but, the instant
they emerged into the fields, shells and shrapnel poured on them in a
torrent. So they held their post. Monday passed without their stirring
from those woods. No commissary wagons came with food—nothing could
live in the open. They munched their emergency rations, dry biscuits.
Monday night, Tuesday, Tuesday night, and still they stayed. A dispatch
rider, wounded in the arm, brought orders for them to hold hard and
never flinch.
Nothing to eat now but grains of coffee. The water was gone from their
canteens, long ago; but the men stretched out their overcoats in the
rain, and drank the pools of water as fast as they collected. And,
always, night and day, the thunder of the German guns about them. The
din was so terrific that the men had fairly to shout to each other—they
were almost deaf.