It was silent and lonely in the valley; the whole countryside was desolate. We saw neither soldier nor civilian. The very air seemed charged with disaster. In a few minutes we ran into Lagny, which was absolutely deserted. A curious sensation it is to enter a town having all the marks of being inhabited and yet to sense the utter absence of human beings. On the village square, however, we found the Mayor, who, like so many brave French officials throughout the country, had felt it his first duty to stand by his community, come what might to him personally. He told us that the Germans were spread all over the country between Lagny and the Meaux, ten miles away, and added that their cavalry had been through the town recently and might return any minute. He then warned us that we could not cross the Marne, which ran through the village, because the bridges were all down. We, therefore, turned south toward Ferrières, at right angles to our original course, and parallel to the walls of Paris.
Before reaching Ferrières, we again touched the outer lines of the fortified camp. Here a big standing trench was occupied by French infantry which had been in action with some German cavalry only a few minutes before. The captain in command asked us to take a soldier who had been wounded back to the brigade hospital some two or three miles to the rear. This we did gladly and found the hospital located in the schoolhouse of a small village. Here we also encountered a wounded English private who was manifestly grateful to hear the sound of his own language. The village was occupied by a large body of French Hussars who were there encamped. Some of them were rubbing down their horses, others were cooking supper. The gray smoke of the fires ascending through the poplar trees, the bare-armed soldiers laboring over their mounts, the deserted houses, the litter of saddles and equipment, made a picture not soon to be forgotten.
We returned to the entrenchments again, crossed them, and proceeded to Ferrières, where we at last found a road which turned off to the east. We followed this for two miles, passing through the grounds of a large château only to find the road barred by an impassable combination of ditches, barriers, and barbed wire. We went back again to Ferrières, which we learned had been the seat of the British General Staff only that morning, and from there continued southward for several miles to another village called Pontcarré. Here at last we found a straight and open road to the east. We turned down it at top speed, not having the faintest idea of what was ahead, and ran for ten miles through deserted farming country in which the only signs of life were two French cavalry patrols scouting through the woods.
Just as night was falling, we approached Villeneuve-le-Comte. Watchful sentries in khaki surrounded the village, and the fields around it on all sides were packed with British troops, who had just arrived and were in the act of bivouacking for the night. From them we learned that the German army was less than three miles away at Crécy and that on the morrow at dawn a great battle was to be staged. All the Allies had been force-marching to get there in time.
On every side camp fires gleamed out through the gray of the gloaming and their smoke mounted upward to mingle with the gray of the evening sky above. Everywhere one saw men and horses blissfully resting after the long, hot, and dusty march. The men lay upon the ground with every muscle relaxed, while the horses, with drooped heads, stood first on one tired hind foot and then upon the other. Long lines of motor trucks loaded with ammunition were parked along the gutters of all the roads and byways. Along the crowded highway a lane was, however, sacredly kept open, and men looked twice before they ventured to cross it. From time to time an orderly on a motor-cycle, carrying instructions to subordinate commanders, would zip at a dizzy speed down this narrow path which was flanked by almost unbroken walls of men, wagons, and lorries.
The streets of the little French village were crowded full with khaki-clad soldiers. A battalion of Highlanders were going through inspection in the dusk. They now numbered only three hundred odd, but two weeks ago in Belgium they had been eleven hundred strong. An officer of another regiment informed us that he knew of no British battalion in all history which had sustained such heavy losses and yet been able to maintain its formation and fight on. We watched with interest the Scotchmen of that regiment file by after dismissal. They were incredibly tattered and torn, their kilts dirty and frayed; many of them wore big, battered straw hats. The only things about them which were neat were their rifles, their bayonets, and their clean-shaven faces. One could certainly have no doubts as to the excellent state of their morale; we were, indeed, much impressed by the morale of all these British troops who, notwithstanding the fact that they had been beaten back during two long weeks across a hundred and fifty miles of country and had been retreating until that very morning, in no sense felt themselves defeated but eagerly awaited the word to advance and attack.
We spent a profitable and long-to-be-remembered hour and a half talking with the British officers and watching the troops. We had brought with us a supply of the two things they most craved—matches and newspapers, and whenever any of these were distributed it nearly produced a riot. When a box of matches was handed out, two matches would, as long as they lasted, be given to each man of a company.
Word was passed around that we were to return to Paris that evening, and first and last we were given some fifty notes written hurriedly by the men who wished to send a last word to their homes before the battle which was to begin on the morrow. We, of course, accepted these notes only with the permission of the officers.
It was long after dark before we started back toward Paris. Mist and fog hung close to the ground, and it was a weird ride as we felt our way through lonely woods and deserted villages, being continually stopped by ditches or barbed wire or a barrier across the road. Often ahead of us we would suddenly see bayonets flickering through the mist as our head-lights shone out upon them, and immediately the terse cry of “Halte-là!” followed; a sergeant would come forward, lantern in hand, to examine our papers and suspiciously look us over. All the time we felt that a dozen unseen rifles were leveled at us from somewhere out in the dark.