We were in a village near the Marne, when the Germans attacked the place. We had thrown up strong barricades at the end of the main street, from which every vestige of life had departed except—I recall the whimsical observation—that a black cat still crouched upon the narrow window sill of an upper window of one of the little houses. The Germans with their usual intrepidity and singular tenacity of habit were expected to move down upon us in solid formation, and our guns would receive them—we thought—with the almost certain decision of their repulse. I was next to a gunner whose impatience to start the fearful havoc was unrestrained. He kept muttering between his teeth.
"Sacre Bleu! Pas encore! Pas encore! Les scelerats; Pourquoi ne venaient-ils pas?"
He did not have long to wait. At the head of the street, with shouts and the loud beating of near-by drums, the Boches came on, almost as if maneuvering upon a field of drill-practice. I was compelled to admire their stolid impervious confidence and fearlessness. Down the deserted alley of houses they rushed, and from behind them swung upward with stunning reports exploding shells, intended for our discomfiture. But the range was imperfect, and they fell beyond our position. I trembled with expectation—the advance of the enemy, so determinedly forceful, with the ranks close pressed in dense crowds, promised an awful disillusion. Our captain warned against any premature discharge. He would give the word. On the bristling lines swung, massively compacted, like some human battering ram, and when I could almost see the buttons on their gray coats the order came.
It was a whisper, and the next instant the machine guns spouted, and each soldier braced himself for the charge that might follow the foe's disorder, with fixed bayonet. That was a hideous moment. The bodies of the slain Germans piled high before the oncoming ranks, and from side to side of the street—now become a veritable slaughter-pen—the heaving mass still unrelentingly pressed over their dismembered and fallen comrades. It was the veriest depth of hell. I awaited the next word to charge, and it seemed to me incredible that I could urge myself to do the deed, running the cold steel of the bayonet into quivering flesh. Later like a flash this detachment passed, and the frenzy of the moment blinded me to everything, but the fierce desire to destroy our invaders. I waited. The machine guns unceasingly hissed, and they shook with the uninterrupted intensity of their working. I watched in a delirium of satisfaction their ravages. Arms and hands, even heads, severed as if cut with a knife, flew into the air, and yet the flood of humans, with not-to-be-denied insistency, rose to our barricade, and in another breath would overwhelm us.
Then came the order "Charge" and over the barricade with set bayonets—I as best I might—our companies leaped and dashed into the baying pack before us, with the shrivelling terror of the cold steel. The Germans did not like the treatment. The machine guns were withdrawn under the protection of this assault, and while we stemmed the tide, for an instant, it was for an instant only. No effective pressure we could then summon, would withstand the leviathan movement of those belted Prussians. The shells too were finding us out, and we yielded. A German officer cut down with his sword the brave gunner who had so intemperately desired their approach. He was severed almost from shoulder to waist. But he was avenged. I rushed upon the miscreant—so he seemed to me—and pierced his neck with the bayonet in my hands. There were no misgivings then, no secondary thoughts, not even the transient survival of my sickening sense of faintness at the sight of blood. I was acquiring the war-hardening that accompanies incessant Murder.
We fell back from the position in fairly good shape, and soon were reinforced by new regiments, and then by artillery, and mortars, and, as the battle widened, with more and more success on our side, we checked the invasion, and soon were overmastering the invaders. At length they fled, and the whole line swept onward, while fresh men strode into the footsteps of their predecessors and Joffre won the Battle of the Marne.
It was then that I was shot in the breast and shoulder, and fell heavily on my head against a roadside pile of stone. I lay directly in the way of the Red-Cross men—those blessed gleaners of the wounded—and so was quickly carried to safety.