South of the river the ground rises gently until it reaches the wooded heights in the neighbourhood of Beaumont, Thuillies, Nalinnes, and Somzée. I was stationed at the first of these places—a little village on high ground, with a commanding view of the green countryside. Who would have thought, but for the deafening roar of cannon, the incessant rattle of the machine-guns, the occasional whir of an aeroplane overhead, and the puffs and rings of white smoke high in air, that we were looking on a battlefield? How empty it was! We could see from the flashes of the carefully-hidden guns whence death was springing; but in the early stages of the struggle only small bodies of the enemy, whose greenish-grey uniforms mingled well with the verdure, were from time to time visible. At night, however, it was different. The red glare of burning villages and farms, set on fire by shells, lit up the sky and provided a terrifying spectacle, night after night, for the anxious watchers of Charleroi.
II—"WE MOWED THEM DOWN WITH MACHINE GUNS"
As the Germans advanced and the battle raged from morning to night, it became more and more evident that we were hopelessly outnumbered. Possessing an advantage, however, in being on high ground, it was clear that we could hold out for a considerable length of time and make the enemy pay dearly for every yard of ground we had to give away. When once the greenish-grey uniforms began to appear in any considerable number, they came on in solid masses, which we mowed down, time after time, by rifle and machine-gun fire and by showers of shrapnel from our "75's." But others quickly filled their places, and thus the human tide advanced, until at last the order had to be given for the retreat. This was on August 25th, by which date, after the enemy had been obliged to suspend operations for twenty-four hours to collect the wounded, they had lost over forty thousand men.
Ah! les gredins! how well they deserved their fate for the shooting down of peaceful citizens in Charleroi and the unspeakable crimes committed in the communes on the wooded heights of Loverval, Acoz, Montigny-le-Tilleul, and Somzée! With what satisfaction our small detachments, hidden in the woods, let the German scouts pass on in order to open fire at close quarters on the masses of troops which followed! They paid, then, for the outrages perpetrated by the Uhlans. You ask for an instance. Here is one which was related to me by my friend of Charleroi—he who viewed the battle from his house-top, and afterwards explored the battlefield to come face to face with this grim picture. A typical instance of Teutonic cruelty, I give it in his own words: "A little way out of the village of Somzée was a small farm inhabited by a young household, including three small children. Honest, courageous, and economical folk, they had toiled season after season to pay by annual instalments for their property, which they had agreed to purchase some eight years ago. The last payment had just been made; the children were growing up; the little family was happy. But the German monsters came. In a few minutes this hardly-earned happiness was shattered. The Boches seized everything—the few cows, the dearly-loved horse. They set fire to the farm, shot the farmer, and drove before them, into the distance, the poor widow with her four weeping and terrified children. What a sinister picture it makes! It was at the close of a splendid August day. The little isolated farm is burning. A few yards from the door the dead man is lying on his back. On the side of the hill which descends to the main road are the silhouettes of the Uhlans disappearing in the gathering darkness of night. Tongues of flame on the horizon mark places where similar dramas had been enacted."
"Now, then, boys, let them have it hot. Pick off the gunners one by one. Marcel, Gustave, François, do you keep an eye on the officers. Ah, les gredins! we'll teach them!"
It was the day after the battle of Charleroi, and whilst our troops were retiring in good order, my men and I, after the fashion of many other small detachments, were holding a German battery in check. So near were we to the enemy that we could hear the harsh, guttural commands of the artillery officers—so different from the tone of camaraderie we adopt towards our men in the truly democratic army of France—and could see them, though indistinctly, urging on their men to the attack. From our trenches on a wooded knoll on the outskirts of Beaumont, we kept up a steady fire on those who were serving the guns, around which the Boches, falling like flies, quickly began to accumulate in heaps. Fresh men incessantly replaced those who had fallen, who at last lay in such numbers that the officers, in order to make room for the gunners, had the dead dragged away to the rear by the feet. Company after company of men fell in this way until the German officers, who had either been shot or had decided to withdraw, could be heard no more. A lull occurred. Bringing my glasses to bear on the battery, I could see no sign of life save the convulsive movements of a few of the prostrate men around the guns.
"It looks as though they had had enough," said I, to my friend Marcel, a private who comes from the same place as myself—Loctudy, in Brittany. "I wonder if we could capture those guns?"
Before he had time to answer a hurricane of bullets came from a hidden machine-gun, and one of them found its billet. My poor friend, shot through the head, fell into my arms. We laid him gently down, thinking of the sad news that would have to be broken to a sorrowing mother at home, and then, anger mingling with regret in our hearts, once more directed our attention to the invisible enemy, in whose direction we hastened to send our compliments in the form of a stream of prunes. Overhead we could hear the humming of one of our aeroplanes, and through an opening in the tree-tops momentarily caught sight of it as it moved over the German lines, reconnoitering. Rings of smoke from bursting shrapnel broke far beneath it. Its mission over, it moved swiftly back to our lines, and within ten minutes Marcel and many other brave fellows were avenged. Our "75's" got the range of the battery in front of us with marvellous exactitude, and for five minutes poured upon it such a rain of shells as to make it seem impossible that anything could live within a distance of a hundred yards. The dead around the guns were scattered like chaff in a high wind. A great silence followed that series of violent explosions. For five minutes, in accordance with orders, the men were busy cutting steps with their entrenching tools in our trench, so as to spring out of it quickly and proceed to capture the guns. Caution prompted another five minutes' wait, during which there was not a sign of life before us.
"Now, then, mes gars! time's up," I cried, as loud as prudence would allow. "Fix bayonets! Out of the trench as nimbly as you can. Take cover, when in the open, as much as possible. Are you ready? Forward, for the sake of France!"
III—"DEAD ON THE FIELD OF HONOUR"