The End: How the Great War Was Stopped. A Novelistic Vagary

by L. P. Gratacap

The plan was to thrust the great beast sideways, and for that purpose Joffre kept his plunging assaults on the west, while the English lured them eastward and then came the Battle of the Marne. Charleroi, Rheims, Rethel, Soissons, St. Quentin, had been passed, the bridge over the Marne near Meaux blown up, and now came the sudden halt with our backs against the wall, as it were, and every nerve and muscle strained in the death-grip. The magnificence of our resistance was the measure of our sense of peril.

I had trembled for St. Choiseul, but as the tide swept southward those fears passed, at least there was a breathing spell for us all. It had been sad enough. The few men who were under command to join the colors left in a little company, with their wives and children, their sweethearts and parents, all silent and dreary, with the dreariness of nameless fears. The men only were smiling and cheerful, and—not all of them; the women mute, and the prattling children impressed by some instinctive sympathy, almost always mute too. The women were all resigned, I thought, with just here and there some silently weeping girl, who smothered her sobs, and forced to her eyes the same earnest pathetic resolve of resignation that the others wore. Gabrielle had been an angel of mercy to these women. She had visited them; she opened our house to them, and entertained them, and took care of some of the children, and was so brave and loving with them, that they called her, among themselves, la Mère de Pitié—the Mother of Pity. A pretty name.

I had been driven to the verge of exhaustion with work in the Red-Cross and with service in Paris. The dispersion southward of the war-cloud roused my spirits, and then I was requested to follow the troops to Meaux—that was in September just after Quintado died—and I was more than glad. There was much work to do there, and I knew the leaders thought that the Germans were trapped. There had been some evidence of shortage of ammunition with them, and their loss had been crippling—so it seemed, though like some scourge of insects extinction was impossible. Behind those who fell pressed on the unnumbered legions, fresh and ready. But the advance had been too rapid and the critical moment dawned when the blow could be struck that would hurl them backward. So it was thought. So it proved.

The country-side about Meaux is delicious in its pastoral charm. It is un pay riant, and its smiles are so large and gentle, so benignant and inviting, that the dwellers there are always smiling too. The broken land rising, falling, with streams, passing hither, thither, that gleam beneath the fair skies, and are like silver bands and threads on its bursting jacket of green and gold, is a land of gardens and fields, with clustering woods on hilltops, or, just missing that, creeping down like warm coverlids in capes and tippets to the wide valleys. Ah! it is most beautiful. And into this sweet refuge upon these quiet happy changeful villages—changeful in the drifting shadows from the slumbering clouds that basked above them in the glittering sun—came the rough confusion of WAR. But it was not for long. No, no, not for long. The kind God banished it before it had ravaged and soiled the peaceful homes, the dainty walled gardens, the sweeping fruitful meadows, the plenteous orchards, the teaming acres ripening so enchantingly with grain and barley, or profaned its pretty grave-yards gathered so warmly around its spired churches. Yes indeed our armies and the English allies banked here with stubborn courage, and put it all to flight. Drove it forty miles away!

I saw much of that fighting. I was not far away when the English fought like bull-dogs at Landrecies, when they hit the Teutons even harder at Coulommiers, and in one engagement with our own men I took part. I was not with the colors, but in the emergency I offered to shoulder a gun and was assigned to a company by Colonel Brissot, who indulged my fervor with a resigned and sympathetic shake of his noble head, remarking:

"C'est un peu dure. Mais que voulez vous. Quand un homme veut à mourir pour la Patrie c'est son affaire."

We lay back on a hill in a thin wood, and had planted the machine guns in shallow pits. It overlooked a road, down which our scouts reported the Germans were coming. I saw the first advanced lines, the gray multitude plunging on, apparently unadvised of our proximity. It was our intention to enfilade them, and then, under cover of fire to retreat, to another eminence, with a supporting column swinging from the opposite quarter, so that eventually we might catch the enemy in the double grip of two cross fires. On the Boches came confidently. They spied us before our spit-fires got into action, and the order rang out to charge us. Three companies were thought sufficient for the task of cleaning us out. They went at us in a huge lunge forward, almost unbrokenly up the hill slope, their ranks close pressed, and unwavering by the fraction of a foot. Almost at the minute when they started up the hill, from the rear a caisson rolled up to our position, and two shells were dropped amongst them. I saw the individual men fall, while, as they fell, others through the gaps sprang into their places, and the solid front unchangeably swept upward. It was magnificent discipline and superb valor. Another shell shattered the line, and I saw the mangled bodies drop. But still the unchecked tide poured on, with shouts, and somewhere from a distance I caught the vigorous beat of drums. The next instant they were almost at the muzzles of our cannon. The word was given and the ripping articulation of our machines rained three deadly streams of shot. The men rolled over each other in the murderous hail, and, for a moment, the whole line halted. The limp dead bodies formed a rampart, and behind that hideous protection their comrades fell to their knees and answered our fire with their guns. At the same moment a shell with the detonation of a crack of thunder soared over us, and struck the ground behind us, gimleting its way into the scorched earth, that smoked like a mimic crater. A fragment of the shell knocked over the gunner at one of the machine-guns and the next instant our officer caught sight of a swarming mass of gray bodies, debouching into the roadway to our left, stealthily and rapidly driving down upon us, with the evident purpose of surrounding our salient. The order to retreat under the charge of the right wing, who, for the expedient, was to hold the enemy, now pretty well discomfited by the unceasing machine fusillade, was given, and we on the left and centre slowly retired, moving to the second line of defence, more stoutly guarded by three regiments of infantry and the park of cannon.

The position of our machine guns, and the endangered right wing, which had utterly disarrayed the Germans by their bayonet onslaught, demanded attention. It would require but a few minutes for the arrival of a new division of the enemy, and already a greater force was seen detaching itself from the main body on the road, crossing the field below the hill, with a run. Everywhere in front of us the Teuton front seemed to be enlarging, and the glittering helmets of the plumed Uhlans, like a sheet of kindling fires, suddenly emerged within it. There was nothing for it but retreat, and a retreat quickly made. I trembled for the safety of the thin file of defenders on the hilltop. Their certain extinction or capture was inevitable.

Then something most unexpected happened. Dropping shells from the extreme right of our second line of defense, where the danger had been reported, covered the hillside with a rapid succession of eruptions. It was insupportable, though, with characteristic stubbornness—the German officers rushed more men to the desolated slope, where the shells ripped the ground, and filled the air with iron splinters. It was terrific, and our gunners and infantry, dismayed for their own safety, in the superabundant rescue, scrambled back and, together almost, entered the lines of the second defense. I remember well enough my own struggles to get there, for at the very conjuncture when my legs should have best succored me, the injured member became almost useless. I rolled into a lucky hole, where there had been at some time an excavation made, or begun, for some reason, possibly the building of an outhouse or cattle shed. An intense pain developed, and I found myself quite, as the Americans say, "out of commission." Within sight was our second line of defense, bristling with rifles and concealed machine guns, a strong position, well garrisoned, and immediately before me raced the parting remnants of the small parleying party that I had adventurously joined.

My predicament was dangerous. The very thought of capture and isolation for months or years from St. Choiseul and Gabrielle and the domestic duties I was so sorely needed to perform, terrified me, but it also made me more methodical and ingenious. I searched the possibilities of a return to my friends, and the obvious plan was to "lie still," and in the night, if the positions of the armies remained unchanged to steal under the cover of darkness back to the French lines.