Hundreds of German soldiers, exhausted by this forced
march in the heat, without food or water, fell out, took to the cover of
woods, and remained there for weeks, in parties of six or eight,
making their way to lonely farmhouses where they demanded food
with rifles levelled at frightened peasants, taking pot-shots at English
soldiers who had fallen out in the same way, and hiding in thickets
until they were hunted out by battues of soldiers long after the first
great battle of the Marne. It was the time for strange adventures when
even civilians wandering in the wake of battle found themselves
covered by the weapons of men who cared nothing for human life,
whether it was their own or another's, and when small battalions of
French or English, led by daring officers, fought separate battles in
isolated villages, held by small bodies of the enemy, cut off from the
main army but savagely determined to fight to the death.
Out of the experiences of those few days many curious chapters of
history will be written by regimental officers and men. I have heard
scores of stories of that kind, told while the thrill of them still
flushed the cheeks of the narrators, and when the wounds they
had gained in these fields of France were still stabbed with
red-hot needles of pain, so that a man's laughter would be checked
by a quivering sigh and his lips parched by a great thirst.
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