*The Retreat to Paris*
*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*
[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
NEAR AMIENS, Aug. 30.--Looking back on all I have seen during the last few days, I find it difficult to piece together the various incidents and impressions and to make one picture. It all seems to me now like a jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death--a litter of odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose, to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements of soldiers and people, to the death carts trailing back from unknown places, and to the great dark fear that has enveloped all the tract of country in Northwest France through which I have been traveling, driven like one of its victims from place to place. Out of all this welter of individual suffering and from all the fog of mystery which has enshrouded them until now, when the truth may be told, certain big facts with a clear and simple issue will emerge and give one courage.
The French Army and our English troops are now holding good positions in a much stronger and closer line and stemming the tide of the German hordes rolling up to Paris. Gen. Pau, the hero of this war, after his swift return from the eastern front, where he repaired the deadly check at Mulhausen, has dealt a smashing blow at a German Army corps which was striking to the heart of France.
Paris is still safe for the time being, with a great army of allied forces, French, English, and Belgians, drawn across the country as a barrier which surely will not be broken by the enemy. Nothing that has happened gives cause for that despair which has taken hold of people whose fears have exaggerated the facts, frightful enough when taken separately, but not giving any proof that resistance is impossible against the amazing onslaught of the German legions.
I have been into the war zone and seen during the last five days men who are now holding the lines of defense. I have been among their dead and wounded, and have talked with soldiers marching fresh to the front. I have seen the horrid mess which is cleared up after the battle and the grim picture of retreat, but nothing that I have seen or heard from either British or French leads me to believe that our army has been smashed or the Allies demoralized.
It is impossible to estimate our own losses. Our wounded are being brought back into Havre and Rouen, and undoubtedly there are large numbers of them. But, putting them at the highest, it is clear to me, from all information gained during the last five days, that there has been no overwhelming disaster, and that in the terrible actions fought on the four days from the 23d to the 27th, and afterward in the further retirement from the line of Cambrai and Le Cateau, swinging southward and eastward upon St. Quentin, our main forces, which were pressed by enormous numbers of the enemy, succeeded in withdrawing in good order, without having their lines broken, while inflicting a terrific punishment upon the German right.
As I shall show in this narrative, retreats which seem fatal when seen close at hand and when described by those who belong to broken fragments of extended sections, are not altogether disastrous in their effect when viewed in their right perspective, away from the immediate misery which is their inevitable accompaniment.
German audacity of attack against the heroic courage of the French and British forces, who fight every mile of ground during their retirement, is leading the enemy into a position from which there will be no retreat if their lines are broken. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of people who know nothing of the great issues and who are possessed by the great, blind fear which has driven them from their towns, villages, and homes.
When the Germans swept around Lille they found, to their amazement, that this town, surrounded by forts, had been abandoned, and they had only to walk inside. This easy access to a town which should have been defended to the last gasp opened the way to the west of France.
The left wing of the French, which was to the west of Mons, was supported by the English troops, all too weak to sustain the pressure of the tremendous odds which began to surge against them; and, realizing this perilous state of affairs, the brain at the centre of things, the controlling brain of Gen. Joffre and his Headquarters Staff, decreed that the northwest corner of France was untenable and that the main army of defense should withdraw into a stronger and closer formation.
It was then that the great panic began, increasing in speed and terror during the end of last week. I was in the midst of it and saw unforgettable scenes of the enormous tragedy. It was a flight of hundreds and thousands of families from St. Omer and Roubaix, Bethune, Douai, Valenciennes, and Arras, who were driven away from their northern homes by the menace of approaching Uhlans. They are still being hunted by fear from place to place, where they can find no shelter and no permanent safety. The railways have been choked with them, and in these long fugitive trains which pass through stations there is no food or drink. The poor runaways, weary, filthy, and exhausted, spend long days and nights shunted onto side lines, while troop trains pass and pass, and are held up in towns where they can find no means of existence because the last civilian train has left.
When the troops marched away from Boulogne and left it silent and unguarded I saw the inhabitants, utterly dismayed, standing despondently staring at placards posted up by order of the Governor, which announced the evacuation of the town and called upon them to be ready for all sacrifices in the service of their country. The customs officers left, the civil police disarmed, while a flag with nine black spots was made ready to be hoisted on the fort directly any Uhlans were sighted.
The people of Boulogne could not understand, no Frenchman of the north can understand, why their ports and towns are silent after the tramp of so many regiments who have left a great tract of country open and undefended. In that corner of France the people listen intently for the first clatter of hoofs and for the first cry "Les Uhlans." Rumors came that the enemy has been seen in neighboring towns and villages. Can one wonder that mothers and fathers rush from their houses and wander forth in a blind, unreasoning way to swell the panic tide of fugitives, homeless and without food, dropping here and there on the wayside in utter weariness?
I was lucky in getting out of Boulogne on the last train bound for Paris, though not guaranteed to reach the capital. As a matter of fact, I was even more lucky because it did not arrive at its destination and enabled me to alight in the war zone and proceed to more interesting places.
I will tell at once the story of the French retirement when the Germans advanced from Namur down the valley of the Meuse, winning the way at a cost of human life as great as that of defeat, yet winning their way.
For France the story of that retirement is as glorious as anything in her history. It was nearly a fortnight ago that the Germans concentrated their heaviest forces upon Namur and began to press southward and over the Meuse Valley. After the battle of Dinant the French Army, among whom were the Second and Seventh Corps, was heavily outnumbered and had to fall back gradually, in order to gain time for reinforcements to come up.
French artillery was up on the wooded heights above the river and swept the German regiments with a storm of fire as they advanced. On the right bank the French infantry was intrenched, supported by field guns and mitrailleuses, and did deadly work before leaping from trenches which they occupied and taking up a position in new trenches further back, which they held with great tenacity.
In justice to the Germans it must be said they were heroic in courage and reckless of their lives, and the valley of the Meuse was choked with their corpses. The river itself was strewn with the dead bodies of men and horses and literally ran red with blood.
The most tremendous fighting took place for the possession of the bridges, but the French engineers blew them up one after another as they retired southward.
No less than thirty-three bridges were destroyed in this way before they could be seized by the German advance guard. The fighting was extended for a considerable distance on either side of the Meuse and many engagements took place between French and German cavalry and regiments working away from the main armies.
There was, for instance, a memorable encounter at Marville which is one of the most heroic episodes of the war. Five thousand French soldiers of all arms, with quick-firers, engaged 20,000 German infantry. In spite of being outnumbered, the French beat back the enemy from point to point in a fight lasting for twelve hours, inflicting tremendous punishment and suffering very few losses.
The German officer captured expressed his unbounded admiration for the valor of the French troops, which he described as superb. It was only for fear of getting too far out of touch with the main forces that the gallant 5,000 desisted from their irresistible attack and retired with a large number of German helmets as trophies of the victorious action.
Nevertheless, in accordance with the general plan which had been decided on by the Generals, in view of the superior numbers temporarily pressing upon them, the Germans succeeded in forcing their way steadily down the Meuse as far as Mezieres, divided by a bridge from Charleville, on the other side of the river. This is in the neighborhood of Sedan and in the "trou," as it is called, which led to the great disaster of 1870, when the French were caught in a trap and threatened with annihilation by the Germans, who had taken possession of the surrounding heights.
There was to be no repetition of that tragedy. The French were determined that this time the position should be reversed.
On Monday the town of Charleville was evacuated, most of its civilians being sent away to join the wanderers who have had to leave their homes, and the French troops took up a magnificent position, commanding the town and the three bridges dividing them from Mezieres. Mitrailleuses were hidden in the abandoned houses, and as a disagreeable shock to any German who might escape their fire was a number of the enemy's guns, no fewer than ninety-five of them, which had been captured and disabled by French troops in a series of battles down the river from Namur.
The German outposts reached Charleville on Tuesday. They were allowed to ride quietly across the bridges into an apparently deserted town. Then suddenly their line of retreat was cut off, the three bridges were blown up by a contact mine, and the mitrailleuses hidden in the houses were played on the German cavalry across the streets, killing them in a frightful slaughter.
It was for a little while sheer massacre, but the Germans fought with extraordinary tenacity, regardless of the heaped bodies of comrades and utterly reckless of their own lives. They, too, had brought quick-firers across the bridges, and, taking cover behind houses, trained their guns upon the houses from which the French gunners were firing. There was no way of escape for those heroic men, who voluntarily sacrificed themselves, and it is probable every man died, because at such a time the Germans were not in the habit of giving quarter.
When the main German advance came down the valley, the French artillery on the heights raked them with a terrific fire, in which they suffered heavy losses, the forefront of the column being mowed down. But under this storm they proceeded with incredible coolness to their pontoon bridges across the river, and although hundreds of men died on the banks, they succeeded in their endeavor, while their guns searched the hills with shells and forced French gunners to retire from their positions.
The occupation of Charleville was a German victory, but was also a German graveyard. After this historic episode in what has been an unending battle the main body of French withdrew before the Germans, who were now pouring down the valley, and retired to new ground.
It was a retirement which has had one advantage in spite of its acknowledgment of the enemy's amazing pertinacity. It has enabled the allied armies to draw closer together, its firm front sweeping around in a crescent from Abbeville, around south of Amiens, and thence in an irregular line to the eastern frontier.
On the map it is at first sight a rather unhappy thing to see that practically the whole of France north of Amiens lies open to German descent from Belgium. To break up the German Army piecemeal and lure it to its own destruction it was almost necessary to manoeuvre it into precisely the position which it now occupies. The success of Gen. Pau shows that the allied army is taking the offensive again, and that as a great fighting machine it is still powerful and menacing.
I must again emphasize the difficulty of grasping the significance of a great campaign by isolated incidents, and the danger of drawing important deductions from the misfortunes in one part of the field. I do so because I have been tempted again and again during the past few days to fall into similar mistakes. Perhaps in my case it was pardonable.
It is impossible for the armchair reader to realize the psychological effect of being mixed up in the panic of a great people and the retreat from a battlefield.
The last real fighting was taking place at a village called Bapaume all day Friday. It was very heavy fighting here on the left centre of the great army commanded by Gen. Pau, and leading to a victory which has just been announced officially in France.
A few minutes before midnight Friday, when they came back along the road to Amiens, crawling back slowly in a long, dismal trail, the ambulance wagons laden with the dead and dying, hay carts piled high with saddles and accoutrements, upon which lay, immobile like men already dead, the spent and exhausted soldiers, they passed through the crowds of silent people of Amiens, who only whispered as they stared at the procession.
In the darkness a cuirassier, with head bent upon his chest, stumbled forward, leading his horse, too weak and tired to bear him.
Many other men were leading poor beasts this way, and infantry soldiers, some with bandaged heads, clung to the backs of carts and wagons, and seemed asleep as they shuffled by.
The light from roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and glazed eyes, flashed into caverns of canvas-covered carts, where twisted men lay huddled on straw. Not a groan came from the carts, but every one knew it was a retreat.
The carts carrying the quick and the dead rumbled by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither right nor left for any greeting with friends.
There was a hugger-mugger of uniforms, of provision carts, and with ambulances--it was a part of the wreckage and wastage of war; and to the onlookers, with the exaggeration, unconsciously, of the importance of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance and an ominous reminder of 1870.
Really this was an inevitable part of a serious battle, not necessarily a retreat from a great disaster.
But more pitiful even than this drift back were scenes which followed.
As I turned back into the town I saw thousands of boys who had been called to the colors and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to second lines of defense.
They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced boy tried to hide his tears as women from the crowd ran forward to embrace him. These lads were keeping up their valor by noisy demonstrations; but, having seen the death carts pass, I could not bear to look into the faces of those little ones who are following their fathers to the guns.
Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens. Reports had come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and Abbeville. There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the town barracks. They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange quietude in the streets. Hardly a man in uniform was to be seen in the places which had been filled with soldiers the day before.
Only a few people realized the actual significance of this. How could they know that it was a part of the great plan to secure the safety of France? How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which would draw the Germans into the open?
The fighting on the Cambrai-Cateau line seems to have been more desperate even that the terrible actions at Mons and Charleroi. It was when the British troops had to swing around to a more southerly line to guard the roads to Paris, that the enemy attacked in prodigious numbers, and their immense superiority in machine guns did terrible work among officers and men.