THE BATTLE AT CHABLEROI

The loss of life in the Franco-German battle near Charleroi was admittedly the greatest of any engagement up to that time.  It was at Charleroi that the Germans struck their most terrific blow at the allies’ lines in their determination to gain the French frontier.  Though the tide of battle ebbed and flowed for awhile the French were finally forced to give way and to retreat behind their own frontier, while the British were being forced back from their position at Mons. The fighting along the line was of the fiercest kind.  It was a titanic clash of armies in which the allies were compelled to yield ground before the superior numbers of the German host.

One of the wounded, who was taken to hospital at Dieppe, said of the fighting at Charleroi: 

“Our army was engaging what we believed to be a section of the German forces commanded by the crown prince when I was wounded.  The Germans at one stage of the battle seemed lost.  They had been defending themselves almost entirely with howitzers from strongly intrenched positions.  The Germans were seemingly surrounded and cut off and were summoned to surrender.  The reply came back that so long as they had ammunition they would continue to fight.

“The howitzer shells of the Germans seemed enormous things and only exploded when they struck the earth.  When one would descend it would dig a hole a yard deep and split into hundreds of pieces.  Peculiarly enough the howitzer shells did much more wounding than killing.  The other shells of the Germans, like cartridges, the supply of which they seemed to be short of, did only little damage.

AEROS CONSTANTLY ABOVE

“The German aeroplane service was perfect.  An aircraft was always hovering over us out of range.  We were certain within an hour after we sighted an aeroplane to get the howitzers among us.  Whenever we fired, however, we did terrific execution with our seventy-five pieces of artillery.  I counted in one trench 185 dead.  Many of them were killed as they were in the act of firing or loading.

“The ground occupied by the Germans was so thick with dead that I believe I saw one soldier to every two yards.  You might have walked for a mile on bodies without ever putting foot to the ground.  They buried their dead when they had time, piling fifteen or twenty in a shallow pit.”

THE FRENCH IN ALSACE-LORRAINE

On August 9 the advance guard brigade of the French right wing, under General Pau, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, invaded Alsace, fought a victorious action with an intrenched German force of equal numbers and occupied Muelhausen and Kolmar.  The news of the French entry into the province lost in 1871 was received all over France with wild enthusiasm.  The mourning emblems on the Strasburg monument in Paris were removed by the excited populace and replaced by the tricolor flag and flowers in token of their joy.  Muelhausen was soon after retaken by the German forces, only to be recaptured later by the French and then evacuated once more.