"There was a great deal of hand-to-hand fighting and bayonet work on the Ourcq, which resulted in the terrible Magdeburg regiment beating a retreat.
"Monday night General von Kluck"s army had been thrown back from the Marne and from the Morin and to the region of Sezanne and his position was serious. Immediate steps were necessary to save his line of communications and retreat. To this end reinforcements were hurried north to the Meaux district and the Ourcq and tremendous efforts were made to break up the French resistance in this section.
GERMAN GUNS ARE SILENCED
"The second attempt on the Oureq shared the fate of the first. Though all Monday night and well on into Tuesday the great German guns boomed along this river, the resistance of the allies could not be broken.
"Hold on!" was the command and every man braced himself to obey. While the Ourcq was being held the struggle of Sezanne was bearing fruit.
"The German resistance on Thursday morning was broken. I heard the news in two ways: from the silence of the German guns and from the wounded who poured down to the bases.
"The wounded men no longer were downhearted, but eager to rejoin the fray. On every French lip was the exclamation that "They are in full retreat!" and "They are rushing back home!" and in the same breath came generous recognition of the great help given by the British army.
"The number of wounded entailed colossal transportation work. I counted fifteen trains in eight hours. A fine, grim set of men, terribly weary but amiable, except for the officers.
GERMANS LEAVE SPOILS BEHIND
"The enemy crossed the Marne on the return journey north under great difficulties and beneath a withering fire from the British troops, who pursued them hotly. The German artillery operated from a height. There was again much hand-to-hand fighting and the river was swollen with dead.
"Tuesday night the British were in possession of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre and Chateau Thierry and the Germans had fallen back forty miles, leaving a long train of spoils behind them.
"On the same day, in the neighborhood of Vitry-le-Francois, the French troops achieved a victory. Incidentally they drove back the famous Imperial Guard of Germany from Sezanne, toward the swamps of Saint Cond, where, a century ago, Napoleon achieved one of his last successes. The main body of the guard pa.s.sed to the north of the swamps, but I heard of men and horses engulfed and destroyed.
""It is our revenge for 1814," the French officers said. "If only the emperor were here to see."
BRITISH KEEP UP PURSUIT
"Wednesday the English army continued the pursuit toward the north, taking guns and prisoners.
"On that day I found myself in a new France. The good news had spread.
Girls threw flowers at the pa.s.sing soldiers and joy was manifested everywhere.
"The incidents of Wednesday will astound the world when made known in full. I know that two German detachments of 1,000 men each, which were surrounded and cornered but which refused to surrender, were wiped out almost to the last man. The keynote of these operations was the tremendous attack of the Allies along the Ourcq Tuesday, which showed the German commander that his lines were threatened. Then came the crowning stroke.
"The army of the Ourcq and of Meaux and the army of Sezanne drew together like the blades of a pair of shears, the pivot of which was in the region of the Grand Morin. The German retreat was thus forced toward the east and it speedily became a rout."
RETREAT SEEN FROM THE SKY
The best view of the retreating German armies was obtained, according to a Paris report, by a French military airman, who, ascending from a point near Vitry, flew northward across the Marne and then eastward by way of Rheims down to the region of Verdun and back again in a zigzag course to a spot near Soissons.
He saw the German hosts not merely in retreat, but in flight, and in some places in disorderly flight.
"It was a wonderful sight," the airman said, "to look down upon these hundreds and thousands of moving military columns, the long gray lines of the Kaiser"s picked troops, some marching in a northerly, others in a northeasterly direction, and all moving with a tremendous rapidity.
"The retreat was not confined to the highways, but many German soldiers were running across fields, jumping over fences, crawling through hedges, and making their way through woods without any semblance of order or discipline.
"These men doubtless belonged to regiments which were badly cut up in the fierce fighting which preceded the general retreat. Deprived of the majority of their officers, they made a mere rabble of fugitives, Many were without rifles, having abandoned their weapons in their haste to escape their French and British pursuers."
GERMANS ABANDON GUNS
The London Times correspondent describes the German retreat in a hurricane, with rain descending in torrents, the wayside brooks swollen to little torrents.
"The gun wheels sank deep in the mud, and the soldiers, unable to extricate them, abandoned the guns," he said.
"A wounded soldier, returned from the front, told me that the Germans fled as animals flee which are cornered and know it.
"Imagine the roadway littered with guns, knapsacks, cartridge belts, Maxims and heavy cannon. There were miles of roads like this.
"And the dead! Those piles of horses and those stacks of men I have seen again and again. I have seen men shot so close to one another that they remained standing after death.
"At night time the sight was horrible beyond description.
They cannot bury whole armies.
"In the day time over the fields of dead carrion birds gathered, led by the gray-throated crow of evil omen with a host of lesser marauders at his back. Robbers, too, have descended upon these fields.
"Trainload after trainload of British and French troops swept toward the weak points of the retreating host.
"The Allies benefited by this advantage of the battle-ground; there is a network of railways, like the network of a spider"s web."
FIGHTING DESCRIBED BY U.S. OFFICERS
Two military attaches of the United States emba.s.sy at Paris, Lieut.-Col.
H. T. Allen and Capt. Frank Parker, both of the Eleventh cavalry, U.S.A., returned on September 15 from an automobile trip over the battlefield where from September 8 until the night of September 11 the French and Germans were fiercely engaged. This battle was the one which a.s.sured the safety of Paris.
On September 1 the German left and center were separated, but like a letter "V" were approaching each other, with Paris as their objective.
Had the Allies attacked at that time they would have had to divide their forces and, so weakened, give battle to two armies. By retreating they drew after them the two converging lines of the V and when the Germans were in wedge-shaped formation, attacked them on the flank and center at Meaux and made a direct attack at Sezanne.
The four days" battle at Meaux ended with the Germans crossing the river Aisne and retreating to the hills north and west of Soissons. Col. Allen and Capt. Parker saw the end of the battle north of Sezanne, which resulted in the retreat of the Germans to Rheims.
The battles, as Col. Allen and Capt. Parker describe them, were as follows:
On the 8th the Germans advanced from a line stretching from Epernay and Chalons, a distance of twenty-five kilometers (sixteen miles). In this front, counting from the German right, were the Tenth, the Guards, the Ninth and Twelfth Army Corps. The presence of the Guards, the _corps d"elite_ of the German army, suggested that this was intended to be a main attack upon Paris and that the army at Meaux was to occupy the center. The four combined corps numbered over 200,000. The French met them, they a.s.sert, with 190,000.
The Germans advanced until their left was at Vitry-le-Francois and their right rested at Sezanne, making a column 15 miles long, headed west toward Paris. The French b.u.t.ted the line six miles east of Sezanne, in the forests of La Fere and Champenoise. It was here that the greater part of the fight occurred. It was fighting at long distance with artillery and from trench to trench with the bayonet.
THIRTY THOUSAND MEN KILLED
During the four days in which fortune rested first on one flag and then on another 30,000 men of both armies are said to have been killed and a considerable number of villages were wiped from the map by the artillery of both armies.
Two miles from Sezanne a French regiment was destroyed by an ambush.
The Germans had thrown up conspicuous trenches and with decoys spa.r.s.ely filled them. From the forest in the rear the mitrailleuse was trained on the French. The French infantry charged this trench and the decoys fled, making toward the flanks, and as the French poured over the trenches the hidden guns swept them.
In another trench the American attaches counted the bodies of more than 900 German guards, not one of whom had attempted to retreat. They had stood fast with their shoulders against the parapet and taken the cold steel. Everywhere the loss of life was appalling. In places the dead lay across each other three and four deep.
TURCOS FIERCEST FIGHTERS OF ALL
"The fiercest fighting of all seems to have been done by the Turcos and Senegalese. In trenches taken by them from the guards and the famous Death"s Head Hussars, the Germans showed no bullet wounds. In nearly every attack the men from the desert had flung themselves upon the enemy, using only the b.u.t.t or the bayonet. Man for man no white man drugged for years with meat and alcohol is a physical match for these Turcos, who eat dates and drink water," said Richard Harding Davis, who saw the end of the fighting at Meaux. "They are as lean as starved wolves. They move like panthers. They are muscle and nerves and they have the warrior"s disregard of their own personal safety in battle, and a perfect scorn of the foe.
"As Kipling says, "A man who has a sneaking desire to live has a poor chance against one who is indifferent whether he kills you or you kill him.""