A BLAZING VALE OF DEATH

Writing on September 16, the fourth day of the battle, a special correspondent behind the British lines by Senlis and Chantilly, said: 

“I have passed through a smiling land to a land wearing the mask of death; through harvest fields rich with great stacks snugly builded against the winter to the fields of a braver harvest; by jocund villages where there is no break in the ebb and flow of everyday life to villages and towns that despoiling hands have shattered in ruins.

“And I have passed up this Via Dolorosa toward the very harvesting itself—­toward those great plains stretching away on the banks of the River Aisne, where the second act of this drama of battles is at this moment being played.

“Details of this fight, which, as I write, reaches its fourth day of duration, are very scanty, but partly from personal observation and partly from information which has reached me I know that the struggle so far has been a terrible one, equal to, if not greater than, the struggle on the banks of the Marne.

“The events of Monday (September 14) revealed a foe battling desperately for his life; and this defense of General von Kluck’s army demanded of the Allies their utmost strength and determination.

“Picture this battlefield, which will assuredly take its place with that of the Marne as one of the greatest combats of the greatest war.  Through the middle of it flows the great river, passing from the east to the west.  The banks of the river here are very steep.  Above the plain, which sweeps away from the northern bank, rises the “massif” of Laon.  It is an ideal area for great movements and for artillery work directed upon the valley of the river.  Passing eastward a little, there are the heights behind the city of Rheims and above the Vesle, a tributary of the Aisne.  Here again nature has builded a stronghold easy to defend, difficult exceedingly to attack.

“I know of heroic work against these great lines, work that will live with the most momentous of this struggle.  I know of smashing attacks the thought of which takes one’s breath away.  I have heard narratives of the trenches and of the bridges—­these engineers, French and English, have indeed ’played the game’—­which no man can hear unmoved; how the columns went down again and again to the blazing death of the valley, and how men worked, building and girding in a very inferno—­worked with the furious speed of those whose time of work is short.

HEROISM IN THE TRENCHES

“And in the trenches, too, the tale of heroism unfolds itself hour by hour.  Here is an example, one among ten thousand, the story of a wounded private:  ’We lay together, my friend and I...The order to fire came.  We shot and shot till our rifles burned us.  Still they swarmed on towards us.  We took careful aim all the while.  “Ah, good, did you see that?” I turned to my friend and as I did so heard a terrible dull sound like a spade striking upon newly turned earth.  His head was fallen forward.  I spoke, I called him by name.  He was moaning a little.  Then I turned to my work again.  They are advancing quickly now.  Ah! how cool I was.  I shot so slowly,...so very slowly.