You need not look the places up unless you have a big map.  No guide-book ever honored them.

From Penchard we ran a little out to the west at the foot of the hill, on top of which stand the white walls of Montyon, from which, on September 5, we had seen the first smoke of battle.

I am sure that I wrote some weeks ago how puzzled I was when I read Joffre’s famous ordre du jour, at the beginning of the Marne offensive, to find that it was dated September 6, whereas we had seen the battle begin on the 5th.  Here I found what I presume to be the explanation, which proves that the offensive along the rest of the line on the 6th had been a continuation simply of what we saw that Saturday afternoon.

At the foot of the hill crowned by the walls of Montyon lies Villeroy—­ today the objective point for patriotic pilgrimages.  There, on the 5th of September, the 276th Regiment was preparing its soup for lunch, when, suddenly, from the trees on the heights, German shells fell amongst them, and food was forgotten, while the French at St. Soupplet on the other side of the hill, as well as those at Villeroy, suddenly found themselves in the thick of a fight—­the battle we saw.

They told me at Villeroy that many of the men in the regiments engaged were from this region, and here the civilians dropped their work in the fields and snatched up guns which the dead or wounded soldiers let fall and entered the fight beside their uniformed neighbors.  I give you that picturesque and likely detail for what it is worth.

At the foot of the hill between Montyon and Villeroy lies the tomb in which two hundred of the men who fell here are buried together.  Among them is Charles Peguy, the poet, who wore a lieutenant’s stripes, and was referred to by his companions on that day as “un glorieux fou dans sa bravoure.”  This long tomb, with its crosses and flags and flowers, was the scene on All Soul’s Day of the commemorative ceremony in honor of the victory, and marks not only the beginning of the battle, but the beginning of its triumph.

From this point we drove back to the east, almost along the line of battle, to the hillside hamlet of Barcy, the saddest scene of desolation on this end of the great fight.

It was a humble little village, grouped around a dear old church, with a graceful square tower supporting a spire.  The little church faced a small square, from which the principal street runs down the hill to the open country across which the French “push” advanced.  No house on this street escaped.  Some of them are absolutely destroyed.  The church is a mere shell.  Its tower is pierced with huge holes.  Its bell lies, a wreck, on the floor beneath its tower.  The roof has fallen in, a heaped-up mass of debris in the nave beneath.  Its windows are gone, and there are gaping wounds in its side walls.  Oddly enough, the Chemin de la Croix is intact, and some of the peasants look on that as a miracle, in spite of the fact that the High Altar is buried under a mass of tiles and plaster.