Some idea of how the Germans were harassed by artillery fire during their retreat was obtained on a visit to the fields near Meaux, the scene of severe fighting. The German infantry had taken a position in a sunken road, on either side of which were stretched in extended lines hummocks, some of them natural and some the work of spades in the hands of German soldiers.
The sunken road was littered with bodies. Sprawling in ghastly fashion, the faces had almost the same greenish-gray hue as the uniforms worn. The road is lined with poplars, the branches of which, severed by fragments of shells, were strewn among the dead. In places whole tops of trees had been torn away by the artillery fire.
Beside many bodies were forty or fifty empty cartridge shells, while fragments of clothing, caps and knapsacks were scattered about. This destruction was wrought by batteries a little more than three miles distant. Straggling clumps of wood intervened between the batteries and their mark, but the range had been determined by an officer on an elevation a mile from the gunners. He telephoned directions for the firing and through glasses watched the bursting shells.
THE BATTLE AT CRECY
A graphic picture of the fight in Crecy wood was given by a correspondent who said: The French and English in overwhelming numbers had poured in from Lagny toward the River Marne to reinforce the flanking skirmishers. One of the smaller woods southeast of Crecy furnished cover for the enemy for a time, but led to their undoing. The Allies' patrols discovered them in the night as the Germans were moving about with lanterns.
Suddenly the invaders found their twinkling glow-worms the mark for a foe of whom they had been unaware. Without warning a midnight hail storm from Maxims screamed through the trees. The next morning scores of lanterns were picked up in the wood, with the glasses shattered. A dashing cavalry charge by the British finally cleared the tragic wood of the Germans.
BRITISH BLOW UP A BRIDGE
At Lagny one of the sights of the town was a shattered bridge, which was blown up by General French as soon as he got his army across it. At that time British infantry and artillery had poured through the town and over the bridge for several days. General French's idea was to keep raiding detachments of German cavalry from incursions into the beautiful villas and gardens of the western suburbs.
Fifteen minutes after the bridge had been reduced to a twisted mass of steel and broken masonry a belated order came to save it, but the British engineers who had received the order to destroy it had done their work well.
The inhabitants were cleared out of all the neighboring houses, which were shaken by the terrific explosion when the charge was set off. Every window in the nearby houses was shattered.