"Wednesday the English army continued the pursuit toward the north, taking guns and prisoners.
"On that day I found myself in a new France. The good news had spread. Girls threw flowers at the passing soldiers and joy was manifested everywhere.
"The incidents of Wednesday will astound the world when made known in full. I know that two German detachments of 1,000 men each, which were surrounded and cornered but which refused to surrender, were wiped out almost to the last man. The keynote of these operations was the tremendous attack of the Allies along the Ourcq Tuesday, which showed the German commander that his lines were threatened. Then came the crowning stroke.
"The army of the Ourcq and of Meaux and the army of Sezanne drew together like the blades of a pair of shears, the pivot of which was in the region of the Grand Morin. The German retreat was thus forced toward the east and it speedily became a rout."
RETREAT SEEN FROM THE SKY
The best view of the retreating German armies was obtained, according to a Paris report, by a French military airman, who, ascending from a point near Vitry, flew northward across the Marne and then eastward by way of Rheims down to the region of Verdun and back again in a zigzag course to a spot near Soissons.
He saw the German hosts not merely in retreat, but in flight, and in some places in disorderly flight.
"It was a wonderful sight," the airman said, "to look down upon these hundreds and thousands of moving military columns, the long gray lines of the Kaiser's picked troops, some marching in a northerly, others in a northeasterly direction, and all moving with a tremendous rapidity.
"The retreat was not confined to the highways, but many German soldiers were running across fields, jumping over fences, crawling through hedges, and making their way through woods without any semblance of order or discipline.
"These men doubtless belonged to regiments which were badly cut up in the fierce fighting which preceded the general retreat. Deprived of the majority of their officers, they made a mere rabble of fugitives, Many were without rifles, having abandoned their weapons in their haste to escape their French and British pursuers."