A graphic picture of the artillery side of the fighting on the Ourcq was given by one of the artillery officers detached from the British force.

“Meaux was still a town of blank shutters and empty streets when we got there this morning,” he wrote, “but the French sappers had thrown a plank gangway across the gap in the ruined old bridge, built in A. D. 800, that had survived all the wars of France, only to perish at last in this one.

“Smack, smack, smack, smack go the French guns; and then, a few seconds later, four white mushrooms of smoke spring up over the far woods and slowly the pop, pop, pop, pop, of the distant explosions comes back to you.  But now it is the German gunners’ turn.  Bang! go his guns, two miles away; there is a moment of eerie and uncomfortable silence—­uncomfortable because there is just a chance they might have altered their range—­and then, quite close by, over the wood where the battery is, come the crashes of the bursting shells.  They sound like a Titan’s blows on a gigantic kettle filled with tons of old iron.

“At Trilport there is a yawning gap, where one arch of the railway bridge used to be, with a solitary bent rail still lying across it.  And, among the wreckage of the bridge below, lying on its side and more than half beneath the water, is the smashed and splintered ruin of a closed motor car.

“Beyond the town was a ridge on which the French batteries were posted.  We could see the ammunition wagons parked on the reverse slope of the hill.  More were moving up to join them.

“The village beyond, Penchard, was thronged with troops and blocked with ambulance wagons and ammunition carts.

“Through the rank grass at the side came tramping a long file of dusty, sweating, wearied men.  They carried long spades and picks as well as their rifles.  They had come out of the firing line and were going back to Penchard for food.

“Topping the next ridge... the hill slopes steeply down to the hamlet of Chamvery, just below us.  The battery which I mentioned just now is in the wood on this side of it to our right.  The Zouaves’ firing line is lying flat on the hillside a little way beyond the village, and behind them, farther down the hill, are thick lines of supports in the cover of intrenchments.  It is a spectacle entirely typical of a modern battle, for there is scarcely anything to see at all.  If it were not for those shells being tossed to and fro on the right there, and an occasional splutter of rifle fire, one might easily suppose that the lines of blue-coated men lying about on the stubble were all dozing in the hot afternoon sun.

“Even when some of them move they seem to do it lazily, to saunter rather than to walk....  It is only in the cinematograph or on the comparatively rare occasions of close fighting at short range that men rush about dramatically.  For one thing, they are too tired to hurry; and anyhow, what is the use of running when a shell may burst any minute anywhere in the square mile you happen to be on?