Wherever the forces met, the slaughter was great and terrible.  In the excitement and the eagerness of the first offensive, the French seemed to have forgotten the lessons of prudence that the long retreat should have ingrained into their memory, and they sought to take every village that was occupied by the Germans with a rush.  The loss of life was greatest at a point four miles east of Meaux.  There, on a sharp, tree-covered ridge, the Germans had intrenched, and gun platforms had been placed under the screen of the trees.  An almost incessant hail of shrapnel fell on these lines, and the French infantry charges were repulsed again and again, with but little loss on the German line.  But, meantime, village after village had been attacked by the French and carried with the bayonet, and on Sunday, September 6th, 1914, that part of the battles of the Marne which dealt with the driving back of the Germans to the line of the Ourcq, was in some of its feature like a hand-to-hand conflict of ages long gone by.  Yet, overhead aeroplanes circled, on every side shells were bursting, the heavy smell of blood on a hot day mingled with the explosive fumes, but the Zouaves and the Turcos fought without ceasing and with a force and spirit that went far to win for the French the cheering news that village after village had been freed of the invaders.

When the night of that Sunday fell, however, on the line of the Ourcq, the balm of darkness seemed to be almost as much a forgotten thing as the blessedness of silence.  There was no darkness that night.  As the Germans evacuated each village they set fire to it.  The invaders actually held their machine guns at work in the burning village until the position was no longer tenable.  The wind blew gustily that night, and all the hours long, the Germans collected their dead, built great pyres of wood and straw and cremated their comrades who had fallen on the field of honor.

The next day, at this point, developed fighting of the same general character.  One of the most heroic defenses of General von Kluck’s army was that of the Magdeburg Regiment, which held its advanced post ten minutes too long and consequently was practically annihilated.  Although the French had everywhere shown themselves superior with the bayonet and at close infighting, even as the Germans had displayed an incredible courage in advance under gunfire, and rightly held their heavy artillery to be the finest in the world, in the melee around the colors of the Magdeburg Regiment, there was nothing to choose for either side.  The lieutenant color bearer was killed, in the midst of a ring of dead, and not until almost the whole regiment had been killed under the impact of far superior numbers, were the tattered colors taken into the French lines.  It was on this day, Tuesday, September 8, 1914, that the British army realizing that it had turned the flank of General von Kluck’s southern divisions sent its heavy batteries to the pressure on the banks of the Ourcq.