Two miles from Sezanne a French regiment was destroyed by an ambush.  The Germans had thrown up conspicuous trenches and with decoys sparsely filled them.  From the forest in the rear the mitrailleuse was trained on the French.  The French infantry charged this trench and the decoys fled, making toward the flanks, and as the French poured over the trenches the hidden guns swept them.

In another trench the American attaches counted the bodies of more than 900 German guards, not one of whom had attempted to retreat.  They had stood fast with their shoulders against the parapet and taken the cold steel.  Everywhere the loss of life was appalling.  In places the dead lay across each other three and four deep.

TURCOS FIERCEST FIGHTERS OF ALL

“The fiercest fighting of all seems to have been done by the Turcos and Senegalese.  In trenches taken by them from the guards and the famous Death’s Head Hussars, the Germans showed no bullet wounds.  In nearly every attack the men from the desert had flung themselves upon the enemy, using only the butt or the bayonet.  Man for man no white man drugged for years with meat and alcohol is a physical match for these Turcos, who eat dates and drink water,” said Richard Harding Davis, who saw the end of the fighting at Meaux.  “They are as lean as starved wolves.  They move like panthers.  They are muscle and nerves and they have the warrior’s disregard of their own personal safety in battle, and a perfect scorn of the foe.

“As Kipling says, ’A man who has a sneaking desire to live has a poor chance against one who is indifferent whether he kills you or you kill him.’”

NIGHT BATTLE DESCRIBED BY SOLDIER

The following narrative of a night engagement during the prolonged battle of the Marne is quoted from a French soldier’s letter to a compatriot in London: 

“Our strength was about 400 infantrymen.  Toward midnight we broke up our camp and marched off in great silence, of course not in closed files, but in open order.  We were not allowed to speak to each other or to make any unnecessary noise, and as we walked through the forest the only sound to be heard was that of our steps and the rustling of the leaves.  It was a perfectly lovely night; the sky was so clear, the atmosphere so pure, the forest so romantic, everything seemed so charming and peaceful that I could not imagine that we were on the warpath, and that perhaps in a few hours this forest would be aflame, the soil drenched by human blood, and the fragrant herbs covered with broken limbs.

“Yet all those silent, armed men, marching in the same direction as I did, were ever so many proofs that no peace meeting or any delightful romantic adventure was near, and I wondered what thoughts were stirring all those brains.  Suddenly a whisper passed on from man to man.  It was the officer’s command.  A halt was made, and in the same whisper we were told that part of us had to change our direction so that the two directions would form a V. A third division proceeded slowly in the original direction.