Mlle. Duclos immediately suggested that she should drive the car
straight down on the unsuspecting Germans. Her opportunity for a great
action had come. She seized it.
Down hill upon the toiling Germans flew the great 60-horsepower
car. Straight as an arrow it went, with the weight of its two tons
multiplied a hundred times by its speed and downward course.
All the Germans in its full path went down like ripe corn before the
scythe. Straight it flew on without being swerved in the slightest
degree by the human obstacles in its way.
Severed heads flew up in the air and arms and legs were chopped off by
the flying car. Ghastly fragments of flesh and bone, a muddy mixture
of blood and viscera, human remains that had nothing human about them,
spattered the wheels and the body and all the occupants of the car.
"I felt like the very incarnation of the spirit of destruction and
revenge," says Mlle. Duclos describing this wild scene. "I was not
human."
The car flew on its path of death until it reached the captured French
armored car. Mlle. Duclos missed this by an incalculable fraction of
an inch and then slowly brought her racing car to a stop.
The French soldiers looked back. Only a few German soldiers, who were
out of the path of the auto, had escaped death or maiming. Perhaps
there were six in all, and they were aghast at the demon of death that
had swept through them.
The French soldiers showered the Germans with hand grenades and would
probably have overcome the rest of the party and recaptured their auto,
when a party of Uhlans was seen riding up the road from the direction
of the German lines.
It appeared that scouting aviators of both sides had witnessed
the fight over the armored car and had carried word back to their
respective forces.
Once more the gallant French motor fighters were in danger of being
wiped out. Acting in co-operation with the officer, Mlle. Duclos ran
her car back again, putting it between the survivors of the first
German party and the new reinforcements. This move put the former at a
great disadvantage, as they were standing about in a flat, open place,
but, of course, it exposed the Frenchmen to the newly arriving German
forces.
The Frenchmen with rifles and pistols disposed of the remnant of the
first German party, and then started to hitch their disabled car to
Madame Durand's machine.
A shower of bullets from the German side warned them that their gallant
efforts would probably be in vain.
"Whir-r-r! whir-r-r!" came the frightful scream of war cars from the
direction of the French lines.
Two powerful French armored cars sped down the road, with machine guns
spouting death, and engaged the German reinforcements.
At the conclusion of this new battle the five French motor fighters
were able to secure their disabled car, and Mlle. Duclos at the wheel
of her own car led the glorious wreck back in triumph.
Thus it happened that she received the military cross of the Legion of
Honor and is the heroine of the hour.--(_New York American._)