Our instructions were explicit. By midday not one of our men was to be on the right bank of the Meuse.
At this point my recollections of places and dates become rather involved. Three, four days.... What happened? We march and march, and we fight. But there are no long engagements.
We expect to hold each prepared and organised position. No! we are turned and overwhelmed. We have to break up, pursued by hostile projectiles. And what a nightmare the Taubes are. They harry you hour after hour, dropping grenades and bombs, and also messages which we have neither the time nor the inclination to read. Incredibly daring pilots descend to within fifty yards! We fire on them in a fury, with "Archibalds" and rifles and revolvers. All in vain! Nothing touches them. The bird flies off.... I've seen some of the lads exasperated to such a pitch that they began to throw stones.
The line of the Meuse? Far from it! We could not hold it for an hour. The Germans had just crossed it at Consenvoye and elsewhere.
An insane circuit began. Souilly, Montfaucon, Exermont, Tailly—I won't be answerable for the order in which they came.
The most striking episode occurred at Beauclair.
Some Uhlans were said to be resting in the village. We were ordered to chase them out of it. For once in a way our artillery prepared the way for us, by peppering it for a good hour. Then a whistle was blown—we were hanging about on the outskirts—"Fix bayonets! Charge!"
We rushed the village, marvelling, in spite of the preparation, at such an easy success. Then we saw that the enemy had been warned and had evacuated it just before the bombardment had begun. The horrible part was that we had destroyed this village for nothing, nothing at all. Not a house was left standing, not a strip of wall spared. Some of the inhabitants, some women, came out of the smoking remains. They had taken refuge in the cellars during the devastating cyclone,—many of them had been killed there. Mad with rancour, among the ruins, they hurled taunts at us:
"Ah. It's you! It's your work, is it! Even the Bosches are better than you!"