The Marne by Georges Blond

Author:Georges Blond
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811766760
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2018-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

Footnotes

*In Brittany.

*Major-General E. L. Spears, op cit., p. 377.

*Provinces of south-eastern France.

*Sir W. S. Churchill; The Great War, Vol. 1, p. 170.

*“The honour of England is at stake, Field-Marshal!”

†“Field-Marshal, France begs this of you.”

8 THE DEATH OF CHARLES PÉGUY

AS THE shells landed in the village the houses seemed to explode in a whirl of smoke and flame. A ceaseless thunder of gun-fire came from the French and German batteries on either side.

The men rushed into the assault, breathless as much with excitement as from sheer fatigue. They seemed, somehow, to realise that this was a fight to the death. The dead, indeed, already lay by dozens in the stubble, in the beetroot, and in the ditches by the roadside. The wounded, propped up against the round corn-stacks, called in vain for help from the men hurrying past them. There were dead and wounded, too, lying in the streets of Iverny and Penchard.

The yellow-turbaned Chasseurs of the Moroccan division had their knives out. With knife and bayonet, in the gardens of Penchard, they crept like tigers through the orchards and along the sheltering walls. When the Germans of the 4th Corps troops saw these men charging across a thousand yards of open ground they were so astonished that for a moment they hesitated to turn their machine-guns on them. The survivors of that charge were now at the Germans’ throats. “Couper cabèche,”* they said. Each was determined to collect at least one German helmet.

The Moroccan Brigade under General Ditte was fighting alongside the 5th Group of reserve divisions (under General Lamaze) of the 6th Army. It was made up of veterans of the Moroccan Guard; fierce, stubborn fighters, when well led. Their African sun was, surely, no hotter than this; and their light khaki uniforms seemed almost to sparkle in it. The shrill, exotic music of their nouba† never ceased throughout this bloody engagement, punctuated by sharp, brief orders and hoarse, strangely incomprehensible shouting. One wondered how their lungs could stand the strain of such a pace. On the immediate left of the Moroccan troops was the 276th, the leading battalion of the 55th Reserve Division. They had just reached the outskirts of Villeroy. The slight upward slope ahead of them was bare of cover and swept by withering fire from artillery and machine-guns; but they must cross it somehow. The 56th Division was in action farther north, somewhere near Saint-Soupplets. From the high ground at Penchard German officers watched the long lines of French troops advancing one behind the other under heavy shell-fire. On both sides fresh battalions were being flung into the battle.

This, however, was September 5th, not the 6th, which was the date at which the French High Command had finally decided to launch the attack. While the guns roared and blood was flowing on the plains of Brie,* Joffre was still holding forth in the Louis XV Salon at the Château of Vaux-le-Pénil, trying to persuade the British Commander-in-Chief to join forces with the French.

The officers bringing the orders for the attack from G.

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