"But we did our best for the horses. I have said we were four days without drink. That was because we used our last water for the poor beasts. A gentleman has to do that—you will agree?—and the French soldier is not a barbarian. Even then the horses had to go without a drop of water for two days, and I'm not ashamed to say that I wept salt tears to see the sufferings of those poor innocent creatures, who did not understand the meaning of all this bloody business and who wondered at our cruelty."
"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, the dear hamlets of France, and at every faint puff of wind the sparks floated about them like falling stars. But other fires were burning. Under the cover of the darkness the Germans had collected their dead and had piled them into great heaps and had covered them with straw and paraffin. Then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres."
"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. Not many of them, but they came flopping about the dead bodies, and the living, with hungry beaks. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest waiting for him to die. That is war!"
"Yet there are other things in war. Fine and splendid things. It was magnificent to see your English gunners come up. They were rather late in the field. They did not appear until midday on September 7, when the big battle was going on, and when we were doing our best to push back the German right wing. They came up just as if they were on the parade ground, marvellously cool, very chic fellows, superb in their manner of handling their guns. It was heavy artillery, and we badly wanted it. And nothing could budge your men, though the German shell-fire was very hot."
"That is the way with your British gunners. They are different from the French, who are always best when they are moving forward, but do not like to stay in one position. But when your men have taken up their ground, nothing can move them. Nothing on earth!"
"And yet the German shells were terrifying. I confess to you that there were times when my nerves were absolutely gone. I crouched down with my men—we were in open formation—and ducked my head at the sound of the bursting 'obus' and trembled in every limb as though I had a fit of ague. God rebuked me for the bombast with which I had spoken to my men."
"One hears the zip-zip of the bullets, the boom of the great guns, the tang of our sharp French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of noise and stench, the screams of dying horses and men joined with the fury of the gun-fire, and rose shrill above it. No man may boast of his courage. Dear God, there were moments when I was a coward with all of them!"
"But one gets used to it, as to all things. My ague did not last long. Soon I was cheering and shouting again. We cleared the enemy out of the village of Bregy, and that was where I fell wounded in the arm pretty badly, by a bit of shell. I bled like a stuck pig, as you can see, but when I came to myself again a brother officer told me that things were going on well, and that we had rolled back the German right. That was better than a bandage to me. I felt very well again, in spite of my weakness."
"It is the beginning of the end. The Germans are on the run. They are exhausted and demoralized. Their pride has been broken. They are short of ammunition. They know that their plans have failed. Now that we have them on the move nothing will save them. This war is going to finish quicker than people thought. I believe that in a few days the enemy will be broken, and that we shall have nothing more to do than kill them as they fight back in retreat."
That is the story without any re-touching of my own, of the young lieutenant of Zouaves whom I met after the battle of Meaux, with the blood still splashed upon his uniform.