Walking the Retreat by Terry Cudbird

Author:Terry Cudbird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War One, WWI, Great War, First World War, Belgium, France, Walking, Military History, Travel, European History
ISBN: 9781909930230
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2015-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

The Prémontré Abbey, where General Valabrègue was informed that the Germans were nearby while being served supper by the nuns on 31 August 1914 (now a psychiatric hospital). (Terry Cudbird)

This then was the place where General Valabrègue was preparing to eat supper when his staff arrived to tell him the Germans were nearby. His HQ at Brancourt was only a short distance away down a narrow valley surrounded by the forest. After resting at the church there I took another path through field and woodland to Vauxaillon. On a crest I got a good view of a sweep of country to east and west. It was through the wooded valleys on the right that the German cavalry units felt their way on the afternoon of 31 August 1914. Once past the Canal de l’Aisne à l’Oise at the end of the wood I strolled to a farm on the edge of the village and found my bed for the night.

My room was very comfortable but I think André would have looked askance at my supper. The microwave spattered the moussaka from the supermarket at St. Gobain everywhere. I retrieved the glutinous mass and tried to eat it but the smell and taste were repulsive. At least André knew what went into the regiment’s cooking pot, but we have no idea where half the contents of our food come from. I nibbled some cold pâté and Maroilles cheese instead and watched TV. Vauxaillon seemed to have a profusion of new houses. Next morning I discovered from madame that it was a commuter village as Paris was only two hours away by train. The only people around as I walked down the main street were a few elderly residents.

I passed the station where the African brigade left their trains at 5 pm on 31 August 1914 and climbed up to the woods above the village, more or less where the messengers had walked in the night looking for Colonel Simon. Now there is a large war cemetery half way up the slope containing over two thousand graves, mostly of troops killed on the Chemin des Dames in the offensives of 1917.

The plateau of wheat fields at the top of the hill forms one end of the heights above the Aisne which cost so much blood. The front must have been very near here between autumn 1914 and 1918. By 1917 it was a sea of ploughed earth and twisted metal with the occasional ruined building. I turned to cross the Laon-Soissons road by the Laffaux roundabout only to find another monument to the fallen of the Great War. A stone column in the shape of a mortar shell commemorated the contribution of the crapouillots, an affectionate term for the artillerymen of the French Army. The trajectory of the shells resembled a toad’s (crapaud) jump, hence the word for a trench mortar and the nickname for the gunners. From this point I could see all the way to the hills surrounding the River Marne.

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