he 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 battle.

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.

A graphic picture of the artillery side of the fighting on the Ourcq was
given by one of the artillery officers detached from the British force.

"Meaux was still a town of blank shutters and empty streets when we got
there this morning," he wrote, "but the French sappers had thrown a
plank gangway across the gap in the ruined old bridge, built in A. D.
800, that had survived all the wars of France, only to perish at last in
this one.

"Smack, smack, smack, smack go the French guns; and then, a few seconds
later, four white mushrooms of smoke spring up over the far woods and
slowly the pop, pop, pop, pop, of the distant explosions comes back to
you. But now it is the German gunners' turn. Bang! go his guns, two
miles away; there is a moment of eerie and uncomfortable
silence--uncomfortable because there is just a chance they might have
altered their range--and then, qu