“In the day time over the fields of dead carrion birds gathered, led by the gray-throated crow of evil omen with a host of lesser marauders at his back.  Robbers, too, have descended upon these fields.

  “Trainload after trainload of British and French troops
  swept toward the weak points of the retreating host.

  “The Allies benefited by this advantage of the battle-ground;
  there is a network of railways, like the network of a
  spider’s web.”

FIGHTING DESCRIBED BY U.S.  OFFICERS

Two military attaches of the United States embassy at Paris, Lieut.-Col.  H. T. Allen and Capt.  Frank Parker, both of the Eleventh cavalry, U.S.A., returned on September 15 from an automobile trip over the battlefield where from September 8 until the night of September 11 the French and Germans were fiercely engaged.  This battle was the one which assured the safety of Paris.

On September 1 the German left and center were separated, but like a letter “V” were approaching each other, with Paris as their objective.  Had the Allies attacked at that time they would have had to divide their forces and, so weakened, give battle to two armies.  By retreating they drew after them the two converging lines of the V and when the Germans were in wedge-shaped formation, attacked them on the flank and center at Meaux and made a direct attack at Sezanne.

The four days’ battle at Meaux ended with the Germans crossing the river Aisne and retreating to the hills north and west of Soissons.  Col.  Allen and Capt.  Parker saw the end of the battle north of Sezanne, which resulted in the retreat of the Germans to Rheims.

The battles, as Col.  Allen and Capt.  Parker describe them, were as follows: 

On the 8th the Germans advanced from a line stretching from Epernay and Chalons, a distance of twenty-five kilometers (sixteen miles).  In this front, counting from the German right, were the Tenth, the Guards, the Ninth and Twelfth Army Corps.  The presence of the Guards, the corps d’elite of the German army, suggested that this was intended to be a main attack upon Paris and that the army at Meaux was to occupy the center.  The four combined corps numbered over 200,000.  The French met them, they assert, with 190,000.

The Germans advanced until their left was at Vitry-le-Francois and their right rested at Sezanne, making a column 15 miles long, headed west toward Paris.  The French butted the line six miles east of Sezanne, in the forests of La Fere and Champenoise.  It was here that the greater part of the fight occurred.  It was fighting at long distance with artillery and from trench to trench with the bayonet.

THIRTY THOUSAND MEN KILLED

During the four days in which fortune rested first on one flag and then on another 30,000 men of both armies are said to have been killed and a considerable number of villages were wiped from the map by the artillery of both armies.