“The incidents of Wednesday will astound the world when made known in full.  I know that two German detachments of 1,000 men each, which were surrounded and cornered but which refused to surrender, were wiped out almost to the last man.  The keynote of these operations was the tremendous attack of the Allies along the Ourcq Tuesday, which showed the German commander that his lines were threatened.  Then came the crowning stroke.

“The army of the Ourcq and of Meaux and the army of Sezanne drew together like the blades of a pair of shears, the pivot of which was in the region of the Grand Morin.  The German retreat was thus forced toward the east and it speedily became a rout.”

RETREAT SEEN FROM THE SKY

The best view of the retreating German armies was obtained, according to a Paris report, by a French military airman, who, ascending from a point near Vitry, flew northward across the Marne and then eastward by way of Rheims down to the region of Verdun and back again in a zigzag course to a spot near Soissons.

He saw the German hosts not merely in retreat, but in flight, and in some places in disorderly flight.

“It was a wonderful sight,” the airman said, “to look down upon these hundreds and thousands of moving military columns, the long gray lines of the Kaiser’s picked troops, some marching in a northerly, others in a northeasterly direction, and all moving with a tremendous rapidity.

“The retreat was not confined to the highways, but many German soldiers were running across fields, jumping over fences, crawling through hedges, and making their way through woods without any semblance of order or discipline.

“These men doubtless belonged to regiments which were badly cut up in the fierce fighting which preceded the general retreat.  Deprived of the majority of their officers, they made a mere rabble of fugitives, Many were without rifles, having abandoned their weapons in their haste to escape their French and British pursuers.”

GERMANS ABANDON GUNS

The London Times correspondent describes the German retreat in a hurricane, with rain descending in torrents, the wayside brooks swollen to little torrents.

  “The gun wheels sank deep in the mud, and the soldiers,
  unable to extricate them, abandoned the guns,” he said.

  “A wounded soldier, returned from the front, told me
  that the Germans fled as animals flee which are cornered and
  know it.

  “Imagine the roadway littered with guns, knapsacks, cartridge
  belts, Maxims and heavy cannon.  There were miles of
  roads like this.

  “And the dead!  Those piles of horses and those stacks
  of men I have seen again and again.  I have seen men shot so
  close to one another that they remained standing after death.

  “At night time the sight was horrible beyond description. 
  They cannot bury whole armies.