I did not meet either him or Chabert until after the retreat; and,
to tell you the truth, we were so busily engaged in keeping back the
Germans until it suited our purpose to let them come on _en masse_ that
I almost forgot about the "little surprise" which Moreau, Chabert, et
Cie. had announced to me through my chief.
When evening came the gradual move back to more advantageous positions
began. I shall not go into the details of a strategic retreat with
which you yourself must be almost as well acquainted as myself,
but simply state that we evacuated the Caures Wood and got away to
the high ground in the neighbourhood of the Bois des Fosses, where
Peyron, Moreau, Chabert, Sergeant Fleury and myself calmly awaited the
impending catastrophe which had been so skilfully and rapidly prepared
for the oncoming enemy. The Bois de Caures, in the gathering darkness
of night, stood out like a huge black mass against the sky.
"What do you estimate the strength of the attacking force in our
section to be?" I asked Captain Peyron.
"Two thousand odd," he replied, "and they have all of them fallen
into the trap. As our men ran away through the wood, they followed in
masses, blindly and stupidly--_les imbéciles_! Not one of them will
escape, Moreau?"
"Not a soul," replied the chief engineer. Then, glancing at his
luminous watch and turning to Chabert, he added, "One more minute, and
we shall see what we shall see."
We kept our eyes fixed intently on the dark Bois de Caures. Someone,
somewhere, was pressing a button; for all at once huge tongues of
flames, accompanied by a series of explosions which rent the cold night
air, leapt into the sky. Simultaneously a mental vision must have
occurred to every one of us, as it certainly did to me--a vision of
hundreds upon hundreds of Germans, caught like rats in a trap, blown to
pieces amidst the shattered trees of that fatal wood.
So ended the story of the "_Coup_ of the Caures Wood" as related to
me by Lieutenant R----. Hardly had he uttered the last words when the
departure bell rang and we hurried away to the train which was to take
us to Paris.