Behind the crest of the plateau we could see the emplacements of four guns at intervals of about forty yards, but they had not been used in this engagement and may have been shelling some more distant objective.
Before leaving this field we gathered a quantity of potatoes and put them in the German shell baskets which we had picked up earlier in the day, in order that our gift to the field hospital might not leave us totally without food. We felt rather unhappy at not being able to pay for them, but “à la guerre comme à la guerre.”
Just outside of Fère Champenoise on the road running west toward Broussy-le-Grand, we came upon the scene of an action in which the casualties had been exceedingly heavy. The neighborhood was absolutely deserted and as the wounded had been removed and there were no peasants about we could find no one to elucidate for us what had taken place. The action was not easy to unravel and the following conclusions were unverified by any eyewitnesses.
We, however, judged by the condition of the dead and other circumstantial evidence that the fight had taken place at the very beginning of the great battle—that is, on the morning of Tuesday, the 8th, when the French were slowly pushed back from the vicinity of Fère Champenoise. The road ran through the middle of an open field, with heavy forests on either side, some three hundred yards away to the north and south. A French regiment had evidently taken up a defensive position to the left of the road and parallel with it, thus facing the woods to the north and some four hundred yards away. These woods were held by a regiment of Imperial Guard and a battery of artillery had been placed some three hundred yards behind them. The Guards had advanced one hundred and fifty yards into the open and then formed a firing-line. In some inexplicable manner they had accomplished this manœuvre without casualties.
The two firing-lines were thus facing one another across two hundred and fifty yards of open field; the men lying shoulder to shoulder were plainly visible to their opponents. The German firing-line was marked by nine dead. The shooting of the Guard was excellent and thus in marked contrast to the poor shooting of other German organizations which we had observed. The French position was marked by more than three hundred dead, and the roots and lower branches of some pine saplings near by were riddled with bullets; indeed, some of these had actually been cut down by rifle fire, and I estimated that there was on an average at least one bullet for every two square inches of bark. Nearly all the French must have been put out of action before the Germans finally charged, for the latter had only some twenty men killed in crossing the open to the French position. This is such a small loss to suffer when pushing home a bayonet charge, that the only explanation would be that few French were left to resist this final dash. In one place there was a pile of eleven dead Frenchmen who had evidently been killed in a desperate last stand.
Throughout this action the French had manifestly stood their ground very stubbornly, despite desperate losses, and had at no time broken or retreated. There were only ten dead behind their firing-line and these had been killed with the bayonet while fighting in the open. Another French regiment adjacent to them, in some woods farther west, had suffered no less heavily, and the woods were here literally dotted with the bodies of the dead. Our conclusion was that all the Frenchmen had been put out of action. It should be remembered that the ratio of wounded to killed is at least four to one. Colonel Allen said that he could not imagine worse destruction than these two regiments suffered. Evidently it was part of the price the French army so willingly paid for their great victory.
We followed along the Petit Morin and the marshes of St. Gond. Here not far from Soizy-aux-Bois had been a furious bayonet fight in which a French colonial brigade had carried the German positions. At one point a regiment of Turcos had advanced across the Petit Morin and charged to the bare hill toward a long well-made trench held by a battalion of German infantry whose fire had not deterred them. As the Turcos closed in, the Germans jumped out of their trench and re-formed in a line behind it, but broke at the first shock of the Africans, who came on screaming, their knives and bayonets much in evidence. A scene of frightful carnage ensued as the rout spread along the hill. The Turcos chased the Germans over the fields and through neighboring woods, killing them right and left. The total casualties in the neighborhood must have been more than three thousand, the Germans being much the heavier losers.