Towards the Goal

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

There has been neither labour nor money indeed as yet wherewith to rebuild the ruined villages and farms, beyond the most necessary repairs. They stand for the most part as the battle left them. And the fields are still alive with innumerable red flags—distinct from the tricolour of the graves—which mark where the plough must avoid an unexploded shell. In a journal of September 1914, a citizen of Senlis describes passing in a motor through the scene of the fight, immediately after the departure of the Germans, when the scavenging and burying parties were still busy.

"How can I describe it? Where to begin? Abandoned farms, on hills of death! The grain-giving earth, empty of human beings. No labourers—no household smoke. The fire of the burning villages has smouldered out, and round the houses, and in the courtyards, lie the debris of their normal life, trampled, dirty and piecemeal, under foot. Poor farms of the Ile-de-France!—dwellings of old time, into whose barns the rich harvests of the fields had been joyously gathered year by year—old tiled roofs, clothed with ancestral moss—plain hospitable rooms where masters and servants met familiarly together:—you are no more than calcined and blackened stones! Not a living animal in the ruined stalls, not an ox, not a horse, not a sheep. One flies from the houses, only to find a scene more horrible in the fields. Corpses everywhere, of men and horses. And everywhere in the fields unexploded shells, which it would be death to touch, which have already made many unsuspecting victims.

"Sometimes, as the motor draws near, a man or a woman emerges from a building, having still on their faces the terror of the hours they have lived through. They scarcely look at us. They are absorbed in their losses, in the struggle to rescue something from the wreck. As soon as they are sure it is not the Germans come back, they turn away, with slow steps, bewildered by what they have suffered."

The small party in the motor includes a priest, and as it passes near Betz, at the northern end of the battle-field, they see a burying-party of French Territorials at work. The officer in charge beckons to the priest, and the priest goes to speak to him.

"Monsieur l'Abbé, we have just buried here twenty-two French soldiers." He points to a trench freshly dug, into which the earth has just been shovelled.

"They are Breton soldiers," the officer explains, "and the men of my burying company are Bretons too. They have just discovered that these dead men we have gathered from the fields were soldiers from a regiment recruited in their own district. And seven of them have recognised among these twenty-two dead, one a son, one a son-in-law, one a brother. Will you come, Monsieur l'Abbé, and say a few words to these poor fellows?"

So the Abbé goes to the new-made grave, reads the De Profundis, says a prayer, gives the benediction, and then speaks. Tears are on the strong, rugged faces of the bare-headed Bretons, as they gather round him. A group, some little distance off, which is writing the names of the dead on a white cross, pauses, catches what is going on, and kneels too, with bent heads….

It is good to linger on that little scene of human sympathy and religious faith. It does something to protect the mind from the horror of much that has happened here.

* * * * *

In spite of the storm, our indefatigable guide carried us through all the principal points of the battle-line—St. Soupplêts—Marcilly— Barcy—Etrépilly—Acy-en-Multien; villages from which one by one, by keen, hard fighting, the French attack, coming eastwards from Dammartin to Paris, dislodged the troops of Von Kluck; while to our right lay Trocy, and Vareddes, a village on the Ourcq, between which points ran the strongest artillery positions of the enemy. At Barcy, we stopped a few minutes, to go and look at the ruined church, with its fallen bell, and its graveyard packed with wreaths and crosses, bound with the tricolour. At Etrépilly, with the snow beating in our faces, and the wind howling round us, we read the inscription on the national monument raised to those fallen in the battle, and looking eastwards to the spot where Trocy lay under thick curtains of storm, we tried to imagine the magnificent charge of the Zouaves, of the 62nd Reserve Division, under Commandant Henri D'Urbal, who, with many a comrade, lies buried in the cemetery of Barcy.