When the Twentieth was gathered together for roll call, it was found
that there were 150 dead or wounded. Some 300 Germans were stretched
upon the ground. But the enemy must be pursued. So forward, with great
precautions, to a farm, their headquarters—but it was found to be
empty; so here they halted for a rest, the young men still panting
with the exertion and excitement of the fight. “I tried to smoke my
pipe,” said Georges, “but I had to give it up.”
With the artillery still hammering all about—but mostly the French
batteries of “75’s” now, pounding away in fours—the Twentieth stayed
till night, and sent its wounded to the rear—for the stretcher bearers
and ambulances were right up behind these days, with plenty to do. Here
the regiment received with yells and tears the news of the victory of
this five days’ battle of the Marne. It was too good to be true.
The captain of Georges’s company, with his arm in a sling, was
a Frenchman, and now it was time for more rhetoric. He had an
appreciative audience, this time. “You are men!” he announced, “you
have done your duty, and France is proud of you.” But France, it
appeared from his talk, was not yet free; and the moral of his
discourse was that there was still considerable work to do, and he
ended with the word “_Forward!_”
So, forward they went, next morning, gloriously in pursuit of the
enemy, now some ten miles away. Forward, with their bayonets stained by
German blood at last. Forward, all the forenoon, past villages wrecked
and plundered by the barbarians; past houses gutted and outraged
and burned; past trembling, fear-struck peasants offering what was
left of their bread and wine. Forward all the afternoon, along the
roads strewn with helmets, knapsacks, and empty wine bottles; past
German camps in the open, littered with armchairs and clocks and
silver plate, mattresses and broken pianos, and bottles, bottles,
bottles—with sheep and cattle cut open, rotting; past dead horses
everywhere, disemboweled, legs up. Forward at sunset, past wrecked
automobiles, burned to masses of curly iron; past caissons smashed by
shells, and bicycles without number abandoned along the road. Forward,
in the moonlight across battle fields where the dead lay in windrows
in shocking confusion, mutilated abominably, dead in the long fresh
trenches, filling every gallery and compartment, dead in the woods,
dead on green meadows where in the cool night air wisps of trailing
mist hovered near the ground and the stench was in their nostrils till
they sickened and hurried on, rinsing their mouths with water!
Forward across the swath, leagues wide, of death and hate and ruin,
forward, forward all that night!