We took up position with our guns pointing north-east. Behind us the sun, already low in the western sky, lit up the railway-line and the road from Nanteuil to Paris, flanked with tall trees.
Sections of infantry began to fall back.
"You see?" repeated Millon. "They can't stick it, the beasts! Haven't they read the Army Order then?"
Suddenly, almost behind us, rifle-fire broke out. We had been outflanked.
On the main road to Paris, and between the road and the railway, dense masses of infantry were debouching from behind Nanteuil. We were encircled by a huge hostile horseshoe, and it now seemed as if the only means of retreat open to the 4th Army Corps was the narrow road running south-east between Sennevières and Silly.
An officer wearing an aviator's cap arrived in a motor-car and hurried up to the observation-post. Shortly afterwards the Major ordered us to turn the guns right round.
At any moment we might be caught between two fires, for, to the north-west of Nanteuil, on the hills commanding the road, there could be no doubt that the enemy's artillery was taking up position in order to support the infantry attack.
Our batteries opened fire.
The same wild frenzy immediately gained possession of men and guns. The latter became roaring monsters—raging dragons, which from their gaping mouths belched fire at the sun as it sank to rest in the soft summer twilight. Piles of smoking cartridges-cases mounted up behind the guns. In the stricken zone in front of us we could see men waver, turn tail, run, and fall in heaps. From the heights above Nanteuil, from which our guns could have been counted, came no answering roar of artillery.