IV. The Paris Taxi-Cabs
I spent September 7 among the rear columns of the 6th Army. In the morning, the little town of Gagny, half-way between Paris and Claye (Maunoury’s headquarters), and the last point one could reach by rail from the city, was full of men of the 103rd and 104th regiments, belonging to the 4th Corps (General Boëlle), just arrived from Sarrail’s front. They sat in and before the cafés, lay on the grass of the villa gardens, lounged in the school playground, where their rifles were stacked and their knapsacks piled. Some had managed to get their wives and children to them, and were telling great tales of the first month of war. I went out into the deserted countryside toward the front, passing marching columns, motor-wagons, dispatch-riders, here a flock of sheep in charge of uniformed shepherds, there a woodland bivouac, and in the evening returned to Gagny. More regiments had arrived; the town was boiling from end to end. In the main street, a battalion was already marching out to extend Vautier’s left, a thin file of country folk watching them, waving handkerchiefs, the girls running beside the ranks to give some handsome lad a flower. Up the side roads, other columns waited their turn, standing at ease, or sitting on the edge of the pavement; a few men lay asleep, curled up against the houses. But the most curious thing was a long queue of Parisian taxi-cabs, a thousand or more of them, stretching through by-roads out of sight. The watchful and energetic Gallieni had discovered, at the cost of us boulevardiers, a new means of rushing reinforcements to the point where they were direly needed.
It was the idea of his chief of staff, General Clergerie. Joffre had at this moment only one remaining unit of the Regulars to give to Maunoury—a half of the 4th Corps, which had been brought round by rail from the Verdun front, and of which we have seen the 8th Division in action south of Meaux. The 7th Division had detrained in Paris during the afternoon of September 7. It was to be sent to Maunoury’s extreme left, near Betz, 40 miles away. Everything might now depend upon speed. It was found that only about a half of the infantry could be carried quickly by train. Clergerie[62] thought the remaining 6000 men might be got out by means of taxi-cabs. The Military Government of Paris already had 100 of the “red boxes” at its disposal; 500 more were requisitioned within an hour, and at 6 p.m. they were lined up, to our astonishment, beside the Gagny railhead. Each cab was to carry five men, and to do the journey twice, by separate outward and return routes. Measures were taken in case of accident, but none occurred. This first considerable experiment in motor transport of men was a complete success; and at dawn the 7th Division was in its place on the battlefield.
On September 8, the British Expeditionary Force, steadily gathering momentum, reached, and in part crossed, the Petit Morin, taking their first considerable number of prisoners, to the general exhilaration. On the left, the 3rd Corps advanced rapidly to the junction of that river with the Marne; but the enemy had broken the bridges at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, and held stubbornly to their barricades on the north bank through this night and the following day. Farther up the deep and thickly-wooded valley, the 2nd Corps had some trouble between Jouarre and Orly; while, on the right, the 1st Corps, after routing the German rearguards at La Trétoire and Sablonnières, made the passage with the aid of a turning movement by some cavalry and two Guards battalions of the 1st Division.
The orders of this day for the 6th Army were to attack on the two wings—Drude’s Algerian Division (relieving the exhausted 56th Reserve and the Moroccan Brigade), with the 55th Reserve, on the right, towards Etrepilly and Vareddes; the 61st Reserve Division, General Boëlle’s 7th Division, and Sordêt’s cavalry, on the left—while the 7th Corps stood firm at the centre, and, south of the Marne, the 8th Division pressed on from Villemareuil toward Trilport, in touch with the British. For neither side was the violence of the struggle rewarded with any decisive success. On the French right, the Germans had more seriously entrenched themselves, and had much strengthened their artillery. Lombard’s Division of the 7th Corps was heavily engaged all day at Acy; at night the enemy still held the hamlet, while the chasseurs faced them in the small wood overlooking it. On the left, the 7th Division of the 4th Corps had no sooner come into action than it had to meet a formidable assault by the IV Active Corps. This was repulsed; but the Cavalry Corps seems to have been unable to take an effective share in the battle. During the afternoon, German troops occupied Thury-en-Valois and Betz. Reinforcements were continually reaching them. At nightfall, although Boëlle’s divisions were resisting heroically, and even progressing, the outlook on the French extreme left, bent back between Bouillancy and Nantheuil-le-Haudouin, had become alarming. Maunoury, however, obtained from General Gallieni the last substantial unit left in the entrenched camp of Paris, the 62nd Division of Reserve, and gave it instructions to organise, between Plessy-Belleville and Monthyon, a position to which the 6th Army could fall back in case of necessity. In course of the night, Gallieni sent out from Paris by motor-cars a detachment of Zouaves to make a raid toward Creil and Senlis. It was a mere excursion; but the alarm caused is very comprehensible when the extreme attenuation of the supply lines of the German I Army is remembered. Marching 25 miles a day, and sometimes more, it had far overrun the normal methods of provisioning. During the advance, meat and wine had been found in plenty, vegetables and fruit to some extent, bread seldom; here, in the Valois, the army could not feed itself on the country, and convoys arrived slowly from the north. Artillery ammunition was rapidly running out. Hunger quickly deepens doubt to fear.
But Maunoury’s men were at the end of their strength. On the morning of September 9, a determined attack by the IV Active Corps, supported by the right of the II, was delivered from Betz and Anthilly. The 8th Division had been summoned back from the Marne, to be thrown to the French left. Apparently it could not be brought effectively into this action; and the 61st and 7th Divisions and the 7th Corps failing to stand, Nanteuil and Villers St. Genest were lost, the front being re-formed before Silly-le-Long. “A troop which can no longer advance must at any cost hold the ground won, and be slain rather than give way.” Such a summons can only be repeated by a much-trusted chief. Maunoury repeated it in other words. Thousands of men, grimy, ragged, with empty bellies and tongues parched by the torrid heat, had already gone down, willingly accepting the dire sentence. Few of them could hear or suppose that the enemy was in yet extremer plight. So it was. Early in the morning, Vareddes and Etrepilly had been found abandoned; greater news had been coming in for hours to Headquarters—some of it from the enemy himself by way of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, where the French “wireless” operators were picking up the conversations of the German commanders. Marwitz was particularly frank and insistent; his men were asleep in their saddles, his horses broken with overwork. He was apparently too much pressed to wait for his message to be properly coded. By such and other means, it was known that Kluck and Bülow were at loggerheads, that, even on the order of Berlin, the former would not submit himself to his colleague, and that, in consequence, Bülow in turn had begun to retreat before Franchet d’Espérey.