“It was on Sunday last, August 30, he said, that the firing which had been coming nearer and nearer La Croix Saint-Ouen made him hurry into Compiègne to learn what was going on. He was surprised to find Compiègne become the headquarters of the retiring British Army. The sight was one of the most extraordinary he had ever seen.
At a place I am not at liberty to mention he was suddenly met by what he calls an invasion of all that might be called English. First the motor vans appeared. All London, Manchester, and Liverpool seemed to be on the roads. English brewery vans and London motor-’buses with advertisements still on some of them led the way. Along came the vans of well-known firms like an avalanche. They raced down the roads, tooted without stopping, and made a deafening noise that echoed all over the forest.
Provisions, guns, and ammunition were conveyed as fast as they could to the place assigned them in the rear. The drivers seemed to know the roads as if they had been over them every day for years.
When they reached the place assigned to them they got out, prepared to lay down and sleep on the roadside, and told each other funny stories to while away the time. One of the last who had come into Compiègne had missed his way. Suddenly he came upon a few Germans whom he mistook at first for English soldiers. He looked more closely, and when only within a few hundred yards he recognised his mistake. He instantly wheeled his van round, and before they were able to open fire he was racing down the road as if devils were behind him. ‘I got my van away all right and I laughed at their popping at me,’ he said.
After the vans came the soldiers, headed by the 5th Dragoons. They had blown up everything behind them, railway lines and bridges, and it would be some time before the Germans would come up. The soldiers as they reached Compiègne were in the best of spirits. They had been fighting all the time, killing scores of the enemy as they retired through the woods, and losing hardly a man themselves. The French people in all the villages and at Compiègne received them with a hearty welcome.
When they came to an inn or a ‘marchand de vin,’ they were offered any drink in the shop for nothing, or what they liked to give. As a rule the barmen offered them the best wine. The soldiers would smell it, nod their heads, as much as to convey ‘this is good,’ and down it would go. ‘Fine drink that,’ they would say to each other, and march off again. At Compiègne all the townsfolk came out, and exclaimed: ‘What fine men, these English!’ The fact is the people here, as well as at Chantilly, were accustomed to see, as a rule, only English jockeys and stable lads, of less than average size. They had thereby come to imagine that Englishmen mostly were smaller than the French. When they saw the Dragoons and Lancers and the Scottish troops and Highlanders, they wondered, and were beside themselves with admiration.
In the shops the English soldiers made it a point to pay for everything they got. Funny scenes were often witnessed. They would select anything they fancied, hold it up in their hands, and ask mutely by a sign ‘How much?’ Sometimes misunderstandings occurred. Tommy Atkins had not yet had time to master the simplicity of French currency. Two of them were buying bread. One paid for his, and the other laid down the same amount, thinking it was all right. The loaf was much bigger, and the baker tried to explain to him that it was two pounds. ‘What,’ exclaimed the indignant trooper, ‘two pounds for a loaf of bread. You are trying it on,’ and out he walked indignantly, clinging to his loaf nevertheless. Finally, it was explained to him what the baker meant, namely, that it weighed two pounds. The soldier at once asked a pal to return and apologise, and, as he said, ‘pay up and tell the tale.’
The Germans did not give them time to stay long at Compiègne. Firing was resumed during the night, and on Monday afternoon, August 31, the enemy was already swarming round La Croix-Saint-Ouen and La Morlay. In the withdrawal the English were accompanied by French chasseurs Alpins, and the country in the valley of the Oise, with its steep slopes, afforded them good opportunities of inflicting losses on the enemy.
The alarm of the advancing Germans had reached Chantilly. People went from house to house to spread the news. Most of the trainers had already left and their horses had also been got away. Still about forty or fifty animals remained in the stables. On Tuesday, September 1, the guns were heard at Chantilly. Fighting was then going on around Creil, which the Germans had reached. The English soldiers fell back methodically, eating and sleeping on the roadside, and turning back to have a shot at the enemy. He lent himself easily to this game by coming on in dense columns.
The soldiers have wonderful tales about the execution done by the Maxim guns. ‘We take up a position on the roadside and wait for them to come,’ said one of them. ‘When they are 200 or 300 yards away we are eager to fire. “Wait a bit,” says the Captain, “till I make sure they are not English.” He looks through his field-glasses, and then says, “Let ’em have it, boys!” Off it goes, and you see fifty or sixty of them fellows drop. They don’t care; others come on, and then we move our gun.’
This is the kind of fighting that was going on for three days in the forests of Compiègne and Chantilly. They cover about 50,000 acres of ground, and lend themselves wonderfully to small skirmishes. The woods are cut in every direction by lanes and training paths, which were used by the Germans. They even moved their artillery over them; in fact, they swarmed everywhere. On Tuesday evening Chantilly was empty.” The frightful odds which the Germans, knowing the quality of our troops, threw against our lines, caused a withdrawal to a new position.
After this engagement, says a Press Bureau statement, our troops were no longer molested. Wednesday, September 2, was the first quiet day they had had since the fighting had begun at Mons on August 23.
During the whole of this period marching and fighting had been continuous, and in the whole period the British casualties had amounted, according to the latest estimates, to about 15,000 officers and men.
The fighting having been in open order upon a wide front, with repeated retirements, led to a large number of officers and men, and even small parties, missing their way and getting separated, and it was known that a very considerable number of those included in the total would rejoin the colours safely.
These losses, though heavy in so small a force, in no wise affected the spirit of the troops.
They did not amount to a third of the losses inflicted by the British force upon the enemy, and the sacrifice required of the Army had not been out of proportion to its military achievements.
In all, drafts amounting to 19,000 men reached our Army, or were approaching them on the line of communication, and advantage was taken of the five quiet days that had passed since the action of September 1 to fill up the gaps and refit and consolidate the units.
The German army on September 2 was described as having “gradually narrowed its principal attacking point, until it had become an arrow-head or a V-shaped mass pointing directly for Paris, and the southern-most end of the enemy was just before Creil, less than an hour’s run from the capital by train. Before it was a river, bridges awaiting to be blown up, an army as ready as ever to resist it, and the fortifications of Paris. Away on the sloping flanks were armies of the Allies, numerically inferior but as full of fight as their opponents.” But the Germans had advanced further south than Creil for on the night of September 1 their patrols were in action at Senlis with an Infantry Brigade of the Allies.
It is curious to note that this quiet day was the forty-fourth anniversary of the battle of Sedan, when it was expected that the Germans would have made a desperate effort—sparing no sacrifices to repeat the triumph of 1870. But the conditions that prevailed on September 2, 1914, were not quite the same. Sedan-day was, however, celebrated in Berlin, where demonstrations were said to have taken place of a character highly satisfactory to the public.
The fighting at this place was severe, as is testified by the Rev. F. Anstruther Cardew, Chaplain of St. George’s, Paris, who recently paid a visit to the battlefields of the Aisne. “Our route,” he said, “lay through Senlis, a beautiful old-world town with its venerable cathedral and monastery. I knew that the Germans had occupied this place and done much damage, but I was not prepared for what I saw. The quarter of the town through which we drove was utterly wrecked, every single house without exception was smashed to pieces by shells and gutted by fire; nothing was left to tell the passage of the German army but blackened and desolate rubble and masonry.” Other quarters of the town, however, do not appear to have suffered so heavily.