“Several of the villages were set on fire by the Germans before they retired from them, and soon great columns of smoke with pillars of flames and clouds of flying sparks rose up into the blue sky and made a picture of hell there, for really it was hell on earth.  Our gunners were shelling Germans from pillar to post, as it were, and strewing the ground with their dead.  It was across and among these dead bodies that we infantry had to charge.

“They lay about in heaps.  It made me sick, even in the excitement of it all.  The enemy’s quick-firers were marvelous.  I am bound to say we did not get it all our own way.  They always manoeuvre them in the same style, and a very clever style it is.  First of all, they mask them with infantry; then, when the French charge, they reveal them and put us to the test under the most withering fire.  It is almost impossible to stand against it, and in this case we had to retire after each rush for about 250 meters.  Then, quick as lightning, the Germans got their mitrailleuses across the ground which we had yielded to them and waited for us to come on again, when they repeated the same operation.

“I can tell you it was pretty trying to the nerves.  My Zouaves were very steady in spite of fairly heavy losses.  It is quite untrue to say that the Germans have a greater number of mitrailleuses than the French.  I believe that the proportion is exactly the same to each division, but they handle them more cleverly, and their fire is much more effective than ours.

“In a village named Penchard there was some very sharp fighting, and some of our artillery was posted thereabout.  Presently a German aeroplane came overhead, circling round in reconnoissance; but it was out for more than that.  Suddenly it began to drop bombs and, whether by design or otherwise, they exploded in the middle of a field hospital.  One of my friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a bullet from one of these bombs, but I don’t know what other casualties there were.  The inevitable happened shortly after the disappearance of the aeroplane.  German shells searched the position and found it with unpleasant accuracy.  It is always the same.  The German aeroplanes are really wonderful in the way they search out the positions of our guns.  We always know that within half an hour of observation by aeroplane shells will begin to fall above gunners, unless they have altered their position.  It was so in this fighting round Meaux yesterday.

“For four days this hunting among the villages on the left bank of the Ourcq went on all the time, and we were not very happy with ourselves.  The truth was we had no water and were four days thirsty.  It was really terrible, for the heat was terrific during the day, and some of us were almost mad with thirst.  Our tongues were blistered and swollen, our eyes had a silly kind of look in them, and at night we had horrid dreams.  It was, I assure you, intolerable agony.