As far as possible the bodies were buried at night, each attending to its own fallen.

MANY SANGUINARY INCIDENTS

Sanguinary incidents were plentiful in the week of fighting to the south of the Marne.  In an engagement not far from Lagny the British captured thirty Germans who had given up their arms and were standing under guard when, encouraged by a sudden forward effort of the German front, they made a dash for their rifles.  They were cut down by a volley from their British guards before they could reach their weapons.

“Among dramatic incidents in the fighting,” according to an English correspondent, “may be mentioned the grim work at the ancient fishponds near Ermenonville.  These ponds are shut in by high trees.  Driving the enemy through the woods, a Scotch regiment hustled its foes right into the fishponds, the Scotchmen jumping in after the Germans up to the middle to finish them in the water, which was packed with their bodies.”  This scene is illustrated on another page.

VAST GRAVEYARD AT MEAUX

Some idea of how the Germans were harassed by artillery fire during their retreat was obtained on a visit to the fields near Meaux, the scene of severe fighting.  The German infantry had taken a position in a sunken road, on either side of which were stretched in extended lines hummocks, some of them natural and some the work of spades in the hands of German soldiers.

The sunken road was littered with bodies.  Sprawling in ghastly fashion, the faces had almost the same greenish-gray hue as the uniforms worn.  The road is lined with poplars, the branches of which, severed by fragments of shells, were strewn among the dead.  In places whole tops of trees had been torn away by the artillery fire.

Beside many bodies were forty or fifty empty cartridge shells, while fragments of clothing, caps and knapsacks were scattered about.  This destruction was wrought by batteries a little more than three miles distant.  Straggling clumps of wood intervened between the batteries and their mark, but the range had been determined by an officer on an elevation a mile from the gunners.  He telephoned directions for the firing and through glasses watched the bursting shells.

THE BATTLE AT CRECY

A graphic picture of the fight in Crecy wood was given by a correspondent who said:  The French and English in overwhelming numbers had poured in from Lagny toward the River Marne to reinforce the flanking skirmishers.  One of the smaller woods southeast of Crecy furnished cover for the enemy for a time, but led to their undoing.  The Allies’ patrols discovered them in the night as the Germans were moving about with lanterns.

Suddenly the invaders found their twinkling glow-worms the mark for a foe of whom they had been unaware.  Without warning a midnight hail storm from Maxims screamed through the trees.  The next morning scores of lanterns were picked up in the wood, with the glasses shattered.  A dashing cavalry charge by the British finally cleared the tragic wood of the Germans.