The Fighting Retreat To Paris

by Roger Ingpen

The last train that was running out of Boulogne for Amiens was before him, and he knew that little rolling-stock remained at the port. The service both ways had been cut off, but the Boulogne-Folkestone boats were running. While he watched a fast train ran by towards the coast, and succeeding it came four big engines coupled together. Presently one of them returned with two trucks, holding eighty French soldiers, who were deposited on the line, half of them guarding the passenger train and the remainder reinforcing the guards on the line of communications. By and by word was passed along to keep the road clear for troops, and carts pulled on to one side. In a few minutes some khaki-clad soldiers swung round a bend. Their gait showed they were not Britishers, and the kepi or fez indicated their origin.

They were two companies of French Algerian troops, the “Turcos,” as they are called. They advanced rapidly, shuffling along rather than marching, carrying their equipment easily. With them were three ammunition mules, entrenching tools carried in a mule pack, and two light carts. Officers showed their delight at the prospect of getting into touch with the enemy by waving their hands at cheering people, while the rank and file raised their arms, palm of the hand uppermost, and acknowledged the salutations by opening and closing the hand. They were a happy party, and they brushed past the villagers and quickened their pace to get to the point assigned to them.

The villagers were satisfied that the coloured troops would stand till the last man, but there were many of their compatriots moving forward with their families to places more secure. Generally these fugitives were of the farming class, and each of the long, low farm wagons was a tale of tragedy of the war. Weary horses hauled vehicles piled up with household goods. The drivers were mere lads or old men, whose years unfitted them for military service, and packages of all sorts, and perambulators in some cases, occupied one-half of the space, and women and children, seated on hay and straw, the remainder. Nobody seemed to speak; abandoned homes and the fear that all was not well with the army in which their menfolk were serving made them dumb. But if there was panic, nobody showed it, for all met the situation with stolid countenances and were apparently ready to accept what the fates decreed.

Passengers on the train were more alarmed. They, too, had heard that German cavalry were near, and they chafed at the vexatious stoppages every couple of hundred yards. But every move forward was nearer safety, and all seemed pleased that French infantry marched by the side of the train. A progress of a mile an hour for the last three miles satisfied nobody, and when Amiens was reached the summons given to passengers for Paris to change caused some concern. The lines were mainly occupied by troop trains, as they had been for eighteen hours. The French wastage of war has been more than made good in this region.

You meet refugees by the thousand, and a man with a heart of flint would be sorry for them. On every grim visage is written the stern realities of war. Infinite suffering, aye, and splendid courage and patriotism, is lined on every face, and you feel when they pass you by that heroism is shared almost in an equal degree by most civilians and fighting men.

Old Frenchmen, who have left behind them the fortunes they have built; children, who were learning to hope they would follow in worthy footsteps; dames who had earned repose by reason of arduous and thrifty years of activity, and younger women who gloried in husbands’ commercial enterprise and success, passed you, not broken people, but a crowd who will have to begin life anew when the scourge of war has ceased scarring the land.

Of all the people moving in advance of the brutal German line, one’s sympathies must go out to the women. “It has been my good fortune (continues Mr. Massey)—for though it was a sight which made one feel the terrible penalties inflicted by war, it brought out vividly the nobler side of humanity—to be very near the fighting line in the past two days, and I have watched many a case of women’s heroism. It was not the self-denial of Red Cross nurses that impressed me most. To that one is accustomed. But the long procession of weary women, cheerfully encouraging children, hungry and tired and footsore, or with bones aching from the jolting of farm carts, was a picture of splendid courage, which made you understand how a nation becomes resolute in face of war. The women play their part silently and without complaint.

Of the thousands of big-hearted women I have seen during the past sixteen days in France, I need only refer to one. She is an example of the patriotic Frenchwoman of to-day. I met her at a town which was evacuated, and she was proceeding with a splendid son of France, aged ten, and a delightfully talkative little girl of eight, to a place where her children would be safe from the oppression of an enemy. This cultured lady is the wife of a captain of cavalry who is doing a patriot’s work. As she looked back at her home at Longwy she saw a lifetime’s treasures burnt, but the sadness of her heart was not betrayed to her children. To them she merely indicated that a gallant father’s regiment would see to it that they returned home soon.

Horses and vehicles were required for the country’s service, so the mother and children walked through French lines to where they thought they would be safe. They proceeded west, and went through Marville (where “Daddy” was fighting), on to Charleville. Here they rested and waited, not dreaming that a weakened left wing would cause the whole French line to retire and force a re-assembling on positions further south. But strategy is left to men in France, and when word was sent round that the inhabitants of Charleville should leave their dwellings, the cavalry officer’s wife and children gave up seats in the last south-bound train to old people and trudged over rolling ground for thirty kilometres before they reached a railway line which still provided a train for civilians.

When I saw this family the mother had not tasted food for three days, and the children did not want to eat while the mother starved. The bright eyes of the boy were not dimmed by the exhaustion of bearing his part in carrying a bag too heavy for his immature shoulders, and it was glorious to see the comfort he was to his mother.