And this is only one day on the fringe of the great struggle of whose incident, triumph, and lonely death there shall be small record.
The Battles on the Marne
Tuesday's distant sight of the Germans moving north-west across the hills above Betz was in reality a side-view of the masterly and rapid retreat that von Kluck made from the Battles on the Marne. The French and our own troops were close on his heels; but so skilfully was the retreat executed that our cavalry was unable to operate effectively, and the German western armies extricated themselves from our enveloping movement without severe defeat. They were falling back at express speed upon the position already selected along the heights behind the Aisne. On the morning after regaining Paris I ran out through Lagny to Meaux, to follow up the line of the battles.
Paris, Thursday.
Those have been grim fights round Meaux the last few days. It is no single battlefield; rather a continuous line of battles. But Chaucotin, Poincy, Penchard, Chambery, may be remembered in history as the triangle where the flood was first turned back. The line is marked on the fields like the waving edge of a past tide on the beach—those pleasant fields, stubble, meadow, trees, that fall from either side to the wooded, sheltered river; and among them, caught as in a hollow, Meaux itself, its cathedral, by some miracle, still unharmed.
The loss has been great, especially on the side of the Germans. The peasants to-day were shovelling into the long trenches the terrible harvest of death. All round us was the litter of battle, smashed muskets, smashed helmets, and broken life.
I could follow the fighting foot by foot from well south of Meaux. Haystacks torn down and scattered over the field for trusses of shelter. Haystacks still standing, their north side torn and holed with shrapnel, with trusses like wings on either side whence the men had fired. Burnt woods, trees cut down and broken, and the long brown lines of trenches.