The fight began with a race for the ridges. We had no particular advantage, and a scrimmaging fight began at once all along the line. Our artillery was in great part neutralised; so was that of the other side. It simply became a struggle of endurance—the Germans, relying on the superior discipline of their men, could afford to feed the fighting line more slowly (i.e. with greater distance between the following lines), and thanks to the perfection of their Staff, trained to work as nearly as possible under wartime conditions, the mechanism of the feed worked with less friction and more certainty; fresh troops were always forthcoming when they were required. On the other side the machinery wanted lubricating, owing to their radically defective conception of the nature of the infantry fight, which induced them to move to the attack in a succession of extended lines following one another too quickly; their strength melted away almost before they reached the actual fighting line, and then the Staff failed to send support quickly enough. It was soon evident that they were bleeding to exhaustion more rapidly than we were.
Thus hour by hour our attack pressed home like waves of an incoming tide, and from a distance the effect was most curious to watch. Two long undulating lines—a light blue haze hanging over them—each seemed to be backed by some elastic force; as the equilibrium at one point was disturbed, one line recoiled and the other pressed forward till flanking fire brought it again to a stop for the moment.
By noon the edge of the high ground overlooking the valley, through which runs the Rhine-Marne Canal, was reached, and now the flood was running strong in our favour. Then we could see, too, how these disturbances in the equilibrium of the two lines were occasioned. The smaller units of the French thought too much of their flanks, too little of their centre. Thus, where two battalions or companies touched, the men balled up and crowded together, offering a better target; then the fire from the centre relaxed, and the moment the pressure of the enemy’s fire gave way, the Germans dashed forward to fill up the vacuum. Soon, too, the French endeavoured to bring up their reserves in column, for their men would no longer advance in extended order; and now the small calibre rifle and its great penetration justified its existence; I had not thought much of it before. But the employment of columns induced a new feature—viz., a tendency in the larger units (e.g. divisions) to close on their centre—and presently before our eyes we saw a great gap opening out behind the enemy’s fighting line. The time for the final blow was close at hand. Our gunners, coming up under cover of the hills, were crushing the artillery of the enemy out in the plain, and had some attention to spare for his reserves. I saw a cavalry aide-de-camp leave the Staff of the Army Commander, who was close at hand, and I made tracks as fast as I could for some broken ground, where I hoped to be safe from the coming storm.
Twenty minutes afterwards, heading straight for the gap I described above, came at least eight squadrons in line at a gallop. Their ground scouts yelled at their own infantry in front to lie down, and they mostly did so. The cavalry checked for a moment at them, as if at a fence, and then swept down on the infantry in front, not two hundred yards distant, rode over and beyond them, wheeled outwards, and bore down on the reserves. As they passed our infantry, the latter threw themselves into groups to let the second line of cavalry—which still remained in squadron columns—through, and then four more lines of cavalry followed, and the whole plain became a sea of dust and confusion. Our infantry rallied into company columns, and dashed forward with the bayonet in pursuit, and we had the last tableau of Waterloo over again. The canal and the stream in the hollow put a stop to our advance, and fresh infantry with the pioneer companies moved forward to make good the crossing, which might have been a troublesome business enough, had not the troops to our left—i.e. west—already carried the passages at Revigny.
Darkness was now rapidly coming on, and the fight here died away. I rode back to the rear, and found food and a welcome with the Headquarters of our third Corps, which had only just reached the ground and had not been engaged.
About five next morning the troops again stood to their arms, but in the night news of an advance of the French Army of the north had come in, and we began to retrace our steps over the same ground already traversed. As we were starting, intelligence of the British victory in the Mediterranean arrived, and with it rumours of Communistic disturbances in Paris. I was also told that two Corps had been detached from the 2d Army from near St. Menehould, and two more from the Russian frontier had arrived about Pont-a-Mousson, and with the four Bavarian reserve divisions were preparing to strike the French Army of the west in their right flank. At night we reached the line of the great road Chalons-sur-Marne—St. Menehould, and about 4 P.M. fell right on the flank of a French corps moving from Epernay on the Camp of Chalons. Part of the Corps from St. Menehould marching by Suippes was on our right, and together we drove the French back in some disorder into the complex of hilly ground about Moronvilliers, cutting them off from Rheims.
The Corps left to watch this latter place had fallen back fighting the previous day, and lay along the road from Suippes by Somme-puis-Attigny—i.e. about north and south.
At daybreak we advanced again, and soon a struggle began which, in the hilly, wooded ground we now were in, utterly defies description. As before, it was mainly decided by superior endurance of loss and a better-trained Staff. Of tactical combination there was none on a large scale, but divisional artillery and cavalry suffered heavily in endeavouring to support their comrades of the infantry.
We reached the culminating point of the plateau after five hours’ successive fighting, but the exhaustion of our men was extreme; hundreds dropped unable to go a step further, and we afterwards picked up at least an equal number of French in the same condition. Indeed, during the last hours of the afternoon, it had become a struggle of the survival of the fittest. The French fought with a determination they never before displayed—probably because the ground, by giving scope to our cavalry on previous occasions, never gave them the opportunity.
But this time every copse and bush gave them the chance to rally, and many are the instances recounted of how superior officers on the French side emulated the example of Ney in the retreat from Russia, and rifle in hand stood to the last.