On the same day, at a place about fifteen miles east of Néry, another fierce rearguard action was fought. The Germans surprised the 4th Guards Brigade—Grenadiers, Coldstreams, and Irish—amidst the woods. They were in a field by a stream, preparing for a long-delayed "tub," when the first shell crashed into them. At once the bugles rang out, and the Guards, angry at being balked of their bath, scrambled into their trenches and loaded their rifles, eager for the enemy's onset.
The German cavalry dashed out of the woods in great strength, and drove forward the British left, thinking that they had only to walk over a broken and defeated army. They were soon undeceived. The Guards held their fire until the enemy was well within effective range, and then the rifles rang out and the Maxims got to work. Many German saddles were emptied; the horsemen broke and fled.
Meanwhile the German guns were worming their way nearer and nearer to the British line, and behind them the infantry were coming on in close-knit ranks. Our artillery now opened fire, and rifles and guns swept lanes of death through the ranks of the enemy. They wavered and retired.
Again the enemy, reinforced by machine guns and artillery, with cavalry on the flanks, bore down upon the British. At this moment our cavalry appeared, and the Guards, leaping to their feet, doubled towards the top of a neighbouring hill which the Germans were bent on seizing. The enemy reached it first, dug himself in, and brought up his guns, which immediately began a furious cannonade. Our men went to earth at once in hastily-made trenches. Three German cavalry regiments now flung themselves at the thin khaki line of the Irish Guards; but these gallant fellows were quite undismayed. With wonderful coolness they fired continuously on the advancing foe, and at the word "Charge!" swept forward with gleaming bayonets, singing "God save Ireland." For a few minutes there was a mad confusion of plunging horses, whirling sabres, and stabbing bayonets, and then all was over. The German horsemen turned tail, and the Irishmen, dropping to earth, picked them off as they retired. The German infantry behind the retreating cavalry hesitated to advance; but their artillery moved up to new positions, and fired upon our men with deadly effect. The British horsemen were loosed at them: some of the guns limbered up and dashed off into safety; those that remained were captured and their gunners were sabred. This done, the British cavalry charged into the German masses again and again.
The enemy had been soundly thrashed, and the British continued their retreat unmolested. For five days they marched southwards without attack. On 3rd September they crossed the Marne, blowing up the bridges on their line of retirement. That day our left was almost within gunshot of the eastern forts of Paris. Two days later the British army lay south of the Grand Morin,[81] a tributary of the Marne. The long retreat was over.
It is impossible to overpraise the indomitable spirit of the British army during its retirement from the Belgian frontier. Our men bore the heavy fighting, the weary marches through chilly and often wet nights, the awful strain on nerves and temper, with wonderful fortitude. All that they asked was to be allowed to stand and "go for" the enemy. An officer thus describes the talk of the men during the last days of the retreat:—
"'Hang it all, sir,' one man said to me, 'if we can do thirty miles a day without food and sleep in a retreat, we could do fifty in an advance.' Constantly the question I was asked was, 'When are they going to let us halt and have another go at them?' or, 'How soon do you think it will be before they let us turn and get a bit of our own back?' or, 'I suppose it's a trap we're leading them Germans into. We're the bait, so to speak, and the French all this time are getting in behind them.' It was fine to listen to and watch them—ragged, footsore, bearded, dirty, and unkempt, gaunt-eyed from lack of sleep, but upheld by that invincible spirit which is the glory of the race."
From Mons to the Grand Morin our men had tramped 135 miles, as the crow flies, in fourteen days. For the British troops the long days of the retreat "had been like a moving picture seen through a haze of weariness and confusion. Blazing days among the coal heaps and grimy villages of Hainault, which reminded our north countrymen of Lancashire and Durham; nights of aching travel on upland roads through fields of beet and grain; dawns that broke over slow streams and grassy valleys upon eyes blind with lack of sleep; the cool beech woods of Compiègne; the orchards of Ourcq[82] and Marne now heavy with plum and cherry. And hour after hour the rattle of musketry and the roaring swell of the great shells; the hurried entrenchments and the long, deadly vigils; or the sudden happy chance of a blow back, when the bayonet took revenge for dusty miles and crippled bodies and lost comrades. On the evening of the 4th the van of the retreat saw from the slopes above the Grand Morin a land of coppice and pasture rolling southwards to a broad valley, and far off the dusk of many trees. It was the forest of Fontainebleau[83] and the vale of the Seine. The Allies had fallen back behind all but one of the four rivers which from north and east open the way to Paris."[84]