After their withdrawal on September 8 and 9 the French returned to the neighbourhood of Lenharrée. This they reached on the 10th and entered the next day. They found in a barn 450 wounded Germans and 150 French. The terrible struggle had drenched the village with blood and reddened the waters of the river. "There are heaps of German dead everywhere," wrote a witness, "in the streets, in the cellars, in the church, and in the cemetery. One walked on them without being aware of it. Behind a hedge ten yards in length I counted twenty-two; a hole in a rock five to six metres deep was a regular charnel-house."
Graves in the courtyards of the houses recall the hand-to-hand fighting. There is one in the large ruined farm seen in the photograph on p. [191]. This farm is on the right after the first group of houses at the entrance to the village, fifty yards beyond the cross-roads seen in the view at the top of p. [191].
During the German occupation an old inhabitant, M. Félix, was killed by blows from the butt-end of the rifles of the German soldiers whom he tried to prevent from pillaging his house.
Going through the village, leave the church on the right. We come to the bridge around which are the graves of the men who fell during the combats on this bitterly disputed spot (photograph p. [192]).
Cross the bridge and turn to the right; 50 yards further on, take, on the left, the road leading through a cutting to Lenharrée railway station (800 yards). Numerous graves border the railway and the road, for the struggle, which began at the Somme, continued on the railway before spreading under German pressure to Fère-Champenoise, Connantray, and beyond.
LEVEL-CROSSING, NORMÉE
Return to G. C. 18, in which turn to the left. The road commands the Somme, and here the troops of the eleventh Corps established trenches along the river bank in order to obstruct the passage. The view on p. [192], taken about 1 km. beyond Lenharrée, shows one of these trenches in which is a German grave.
On the left, the plateau of which G. C. 18 follows the edge, is dotted throughout with graves, the fighting being particularly desperate here on the 6th and 7th. Engagements also took place on the plateau on the opposite bank. The 91st line Regiment, coming up from Lenharrée, particularly distinguished itself during a night attack on the guards.
