This incident I regarded as a bad omen. The French were so confident, so presumptuous, that they neglected the outpost service. Next day the Germans attacked Marshal Douay at Weissenburg with three times his force. This was the fault of the French, who ought to have attacked the Germans with an overwhelming force, instead of waiting to be attacked by them.
The French fought heroically against the crushing superiority of the Germans, vainly hoping that the report of the cannonade would attract assistance from a corps stationed in the neighbourhood of the battle-field; but in this heroic fight their lines were sadly decimated. At first they fought in the village, then they were forced out by the Germans, and had to defend themselves among the vineyards and the thickets. The soil was saturated with blood, and the dead and wounded were lying about in ditches, copses, and everywhere.
"Sir," said I to Dr. Duval, "to-day the enemy will be master of the field, and he will gather up the wounded, unless we prevent this by picking them up while the fight lasts. Now, while the balls are flying about, is our chance! Give me leave to go there with the ambulance."
"With all my heart! Try it if you have a mind to."
"If I had a mind to?" Why, of course, I had come for that; it was the opportunity I had craved, the chance for the immortalising cannon-ball to send me up to heaven and glory! So, taking the twelve men who were given me as aids, I started off with the ambulance to the scene of the battle.
There is not the slightest braggadocio about this. Soldiers, even in the hottest ardour of battle, will carefully avoid firing at the life-saving corps, which is distinguished by the sign of the red cross. But it is impossible to prevent an exploding shell from sending its splinters among them, and on that eventful day I had occasion to watch the course of these splinters.
The firing did not cease for a moment. The roar of the artillery, the cracking of the rifles created a deafening noise; the hoarse, grating sounds from the French mitrailleuses, in particular, made a horrible accompaniment to the dying groans of the wounded. But the French mitrailleuses had found their match in the Krupp cannon. These fire no balls, but some fiendish contrivances, longitudinal, cylindrical projectiles, which explode as they alight, and scatter their deadly fragments far and near.
All the injured men whom we took from the field were wounded by these splinters. As we toiled, the hellish projectiles were flying over our heads; but my experienced aids worked with the coolness of the harvester when he hastens to save his crops from the threatening rain. They knew well that these messages of death were not sent to them, but to the French artillery, which was opposing the advance of the Germans. All this while I felt that indescribable intoxication which is sure to overtake every novice. I stood there in the terrible realm of death, in the presence of the awful Moloch, Hamoves, the angel with the scythe. I felt a chill, a shudder, and I bowed down before the omnipotent Lord of life and death, the Almighty Ruler of the universe.
This short-lived sensation of terror every novice has to overcome. Nor is anyone spared the humiliation of this experience. The eye can hardly perceive anything of the effect of the shots, for the cannon-smoke envelopes the surrounding objects in a thick cloud of fog. The Prussian infantry were crouching down, and, while creeping and cringing thus, they were pressing forward. Nothing but the smoke of their rifles betrayed the level of their faces, and the French infantry were hidden in ditches, behind bushes and trees, and firing from these vantage-grounds. Only the Zouaves and the Turcos might now and then be recognised by their red caps.
While the artillery was pealing, the bugle was sounding the commands. All at once a strange drumbeat was heard from beside us, and the veteran sergeant at my elbow said—