We walked silently among the dead. Where the casualties had been heaviest, we counted seventeen bodies within a circle thirty paces in diameter. Every man of the group had fallen forward with his bayonet pointing straight out in front of him. Some had been running with such élan that in falling their shoulders had fairly plowed into the soft ground. They had nearly all been killed by shrapnel fire, which in most cases had killed cleanly. We found one, however, who had been badly mashed by a shell which had burst in the ground at his feet, making a deep, oblong hole six feet long into which his shattered body had fallen. The metal identification tags, one of which every soldier wears, had not been collected. These are removed by the burying squad, and sent home as announcers of the decease. This group had all been so recently killed that their faces were very lifelike. One found oneself repeating “How natural they look!” and one could pretty well judge what sort of men they had been in life. Here was a slight smooth-faced blond-haired boy, who must have been dearly beloved by the women of his family. Here again a serious, kindly, middle-aged man whose face bore a curious expression of preoccupation. I caught myself thinking, “I should like to have known him.” We found one who in his dying agony had evidently taken from his pocket a letter which now lay a sodden mass in his dead hand. We could not resist that mute appeal, but picked the letter carefully from his stiff fingers to be dried out later and delivered, if possible, to the woman to whom it was addressed.
As one looked at all these useless, cumbersome bits of carrion which no one in the rush of war had had time to remove, one could not but remember how each one had been suddenly wrenched from a useful life and in death had somewhere left a broken family. The dead do not have the tragic expressions with which painters credit them. Those who have been instantly killed generally wear grotesque expressions. Some look bored—others have a silly look of surprise, as if a practical joke had just been played upon them. These grotesque expressions are much more frightful than could be any indicative of suffering. Those who have died slowly are usually propped up against something in a sitting posture, and their faces express happiness or perfect peace.
We passed beyond the position which the Germans had recently held. Here beside the road was a farmer’s house with a great hole in its roof. In the door stood a very old man gazing stupidly at the landscape. In front of his house lay side by side three dead Germans. They lay on their backs; the coat and shirt of each had been torn open at the neck and their bare breasts were marred by a clotted mass of closely grouped bullet marks. Further inspection showed that their arms were tied behind them and we knew that we were witnessing the results of a military execution. The old man against whose house they had been shot explained that they had been among the prisoners taken in the charge of the French infantry the day before and that their fate had been the penalty for what was revealed when their pockets had been searched.
We cross-questioned several inhabitants of the little village of Boissy, who told us that the Germans had held the place for five days and had left only two days ago, on Wednesday evening. Fleeing at the approach of a heavy force of the British, they had retired in a northeasterly direction. We judged from the description given by the peasants that the force which had occupied the neighborhood consisted of a division of cavalry with a strong force of artillery. In entering Boissy the Germans had cornered a patrol of about twenty British cavalrymen and had killed them all, the last three having defended themselves in a little brick house where they had been shot down one by one. The Germans had burned this house and the two adjoining ones in order to make sure that no more troopers were in hiding. We saw only one other building in the village which had been damaged. The inhabitants explained that it was a jewelry shop and that the invaders had wrecked it hoping to find hidden valuables. We did not have time to investigate this statement. There had been no fighting in the streets other than the battle with the British patrol and we considered the condition of the place a credit to the force which had occupied it. The inhabitants, indeed, protested that all food supplies had been confiscated but agreed that no civilians had been injured and that no women had been molested.
As we approached Montmirail, we passed a beautiful monument, dedicated to Napoleon, who had directed a battle from that spot in 1814, one hundred years ago. A golden eagle surmounted a column which stood upon a stepped base. The fields about were plowed by shells and yesterday one shell had knocked a big chunk off the side of the column about half-way up. Leaning against the base, in an attitude of infinite weariness, sat a dead French soldier.
Much of the dismal aftermath of battle seems to be concentrated along the highways, which are punctuated by dead men and dead horses thrown into the gutters to be out of the way. Long trains of horse-drawn wagons plod wearily along toward the front; the towns through which they pass are battered and nearly deserted; the poplars which line the roads are broken and gashed by shells, and the fields on either side are marred by shell craters and by the trenches of the burying squads.
We entered the shattered town of Montmirail at nightfall. Long lines of ammunition wagons were encamped for the night just outside and the town itself was packed with troops. The place had been for eighteen consecutive hours under a heavy artillery bombardment. The houses were battered, the streets were pitted by shells, and there remained in the whole village not a single unbroken window. There had been much fighting in the streets and the place had been alternately taken and retaken by Germans and French.