"From village
to village," says Colonel Buchan, "amid the smoke of burning haystacks
and farmsteads, the French bayonet attack was pressed home."
"Terrible days of life-and-death fighting! [writes a Meaux resident,
Madame Koussel-Lepine] battles of Chambry, Barcy, Puisieux,
Acy-en-Multien, the 6th, 7th, and 8th of September--fierce days to which
the graves among the crops bear witness. Four hundred volunteers sent to
attack a farm, from which only seven come back! Ambuscades, barricades
in the streets, loopholes cut in the cemetery walls, trenches hastily
dug and filled with dead, night fighting, often hand to hand, surprises,
the sudden flash of bayonets, a rain of iron, a rain of fire, mills and
houses burning like torches--fields red with the dead and with the
flaming corn fruit of the fields, and flower of the race!--the sacrifice
consummated, the cup drunk to the lees."
Moving and eloquent words! They gain for me a double significance as I
look back from them to the little scene we saw at Barcy under the
snow--a halt of some French infantry, in front of the ruined church.
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