Another French corps was defeated about Vouziers. So we have the wreck of two Corps, and the whole of one for certain, in our front for to-morrow, for our outposts are in contact along the whole line. How many more we may find I cannot tell, but we are two days clear ahead of their calculated mobilisation, and these two days’ fighting must have seriously deranged their plans.
The men are rather sober; they have seen death for the first time, and the slaughter caused by our new shells is most horrible to look at. Besides, only few of them were engaged in the actual fighting line, and the remainder do not yet know from experience the intensity of the passion for blood which seizes them when once they have taken active part in the slaying.
It has been a wise measure to let the massed bands play to-night, and I have never experienced anything more moving than the sound of the last great hymn, sung by all the men, with which the ‘Zapfenstreich’ winds up.
THE BATTLE OF MACHAULT.
GREAT GERMAN VICTORY.
(From our Special Correspondent with the Germans.)
Dricourt, May 11.
The gunners were moving long before daylight, and I went with them. Dawn was just breaking when we reached the summit of the rolling ridge which marks our front, and we could still see signs of bivouac fires burnt low on another and almost parallel wave some 2000 to 3000 yards to our front. The bottom of the hollow is steeper and we cannot see into it, but they tell me our Infantry are down there.
Our position faces N.N.W. by S.S.E., so again we shall have the sun at our backs. Some of our guns are entrenched, and I notice the intervals between them are wider than usual, probably, as before, to ward against the melinite shells.
Of our strategic position all I know is that we have a Corps on either flank, and two within supporting distance—what the 2d Army is doing I don’t know.