My train, in which there were only four other men, skirted the German army, and by a twist in the line almost ran into the enemy's country, but we rushed through the night, and the engine driver laughed and put his oily hand up to salute when I stepped out to the platform of an unknown station. "The Germans won't get us, after all," he said. It was a little risky, all the same.
The station was crowded with French soldiers, and they were soon telling me their experience of the hard fighting in which they had been engaged. They were dirty, unshaven, dusty from head to foot, scorched by the August sun, in tattered uniforms and broken boots; but they were beautiful men for all their dirt, and the laughing courage, quiet confidence, and unbragging simplicity with which they assured me that the Germans would soon be caught in a death trap and sent to their destruction filled me with admiration which I cannot express in words. All the odds were against them; they had fought the hardest of all actions—the retirement from the fighting line—but they had absolute faith in the ultimate success of their allied arms.
I managed to get to Paris. It was in the middle of the night, but extraordinary scenes were taking place. It had become known during the day that Paris was no longer the seat of the Government, which has moved to Bordeaux. The Parisians had had notice of four days in which to destroy their houses within the zone of fortifications, and, to add to the cold fear occasioned by this news, aeroplanes had dropped bombs upon the Gare de l'Est that afternoon.
There was a rush last night to get away from the capital, and the railway stations were great camps of fugitives, in which the richest and poorest citizens were mingled with their women and children. But the tragedy deepened when it was heard that most of the lines to the east had been cut, and that the only line remaining open to Dieppe would probably be destroyed during the next few hours. A great wail of grief arose from the crowds, and the misery of these people was pitiful.
Among them were groups of soldiers of many regiments. Many of them were wounded and lay on stretchers on the floor among crying babies and weary-eyed women. They had been beaten and were done for until the end of the war. But, alone among the panic-stricken crowd—panic-stricken, yet not noisy or hysterical, but very quiet and restrained for the most part—the soldiers were cheerful, and even gay.
Among them were some British troops, and I had a talk with them. They had been fighting for ten days without cessation, and their story is typical of the way in which all our troops held themselves.
"We had been fighting night and day," said a Sergeant. "For the whole of that time the only rest from fighting was when we were marching and retiring." He spoke of the German Army as an avalanche of armed men. "You can't mow that down," he said. "We kill them and kill them, and still they come on. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh troops. Directly we check them in one attack a fresh attack is developed. It is impossible to oppose such a mass of men with any success."
This splendid fellow, who was severely wounded, was still so much master of himself, so supreme in his common sense, that he was able to get the right perspective about the general situation.
"It is not right to say we have met with disaster," he said. "We have to expect that nowadays. Besides, what if a battalion was cut up? That did not mean defeat. While one regiment suffered, another got off lightly"; and by the words of that Sergeant the public may learn to see the truth of what has happened. I can add my own evidence to his. All along the lines I have spoken to officers and men, and the actual truth is that the British Army is still unbroken, having retired in perfect order to good positions—the most marvelous feat ever accomplished in modern warfare.
From Paris I went by the last train again which has got through to Dieppe. Lately I seem to have become an expert in catching the last train. It was only a branch line which struggles in an erratic way through the west of France, and the going was long and painful, because at every wayside station the carriages were besieged by people trying to escape. They were very patient and very brave. Even when they found that it was impossible to get one more human being on or one more package into the already crowded train they turned away in quiet grief, and when women wept over their babies it was silently and without abandonment to despair. The women of France are brave, God knows. I have seen their courage during the past ten days—gallantry surpassing that of the men, because of their own children in their arms without shelter, food, or safety in this terrible flight from the advancing enemy.