Many other men were leading poor beasts this way, and infantry soldiers, some with bandaged heads, clung to the backs of carts and wagons, and seemed asleep as they shuffled by.
The light from roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and glazed eyes, flashed into caverns of canvas-covered carts, where twisted men lay huddled on straw. Not a groan came from the carts, but every one knew it was a retreat.
The carts carrying the quick and the dead rumbled by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither right nor left for any greeting with friends.
There was a hugger-mugger of uniforms, of provision carts, and with ambulances—it was a part of the wreckage and wastage of war; and to the onlookers, with the exaggeration, unconsciously, of the importance of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance and an ominous reminder of 1870.
Really this was an inevitable part of a serious battle, not necessarily a retreat from a great disaster.
But more pitiful even than this drift back were scenes which followed. As I turned back into the town I saw thousands of boys who had been called to the colors and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to second lines of defense.
They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced boy tried to hide his tears as women from the crowd ran forward to embrace him. These lads were keeping up their valor by noisy demonstrations; but, having seen the death carts pass, I could not bear to look into the faces of those little ones who are following their fathers to the guns.
Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens. Reports had come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and Abbeville. There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the town barracks. They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange quietude in the streets. Hardly a man in uniform was to be seen in the places which had been filled with soldiers the day before.
Only a few people realized the actual significance of this. How could they know that it was a part of the great plan to secure the safety of France? How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which would draw the Germans into the open?
The fighting on the Cambrai-Cateau line seems to have been more desperate even that the terrible actions at Mons and Charleroi. It was when the British troops had to swing around to a more southerly line to guard the roads to Paris, that the enemy attacked in prodigious numbers, and their immense superiority in machine guns did terrible work among officers and men.