"The German aeroplane service was perfect. An aircraft was always
hovering over us out of range. We were certain within an hour after we
sighted an aeroplane to get the howitzers among us. Whenever we fired,
however, we did terrific execution with our seventy-five pieces of
artillery. I counted in one trench 185 dead. Many of them were killed as
they were in the act of firing or loading.

"The ground occupied by the Germans was so thick with dead that I
believe I saw one soldier to every two yards. You might have walked for
a mile on bodies without ever putting foot to the ground. They buried
their dead when they had time, piling fifteen or twenty in a shallow
pit."

THE FRENCH IN ALSACE-LORRAINE

On August 9 the advance guard brigade of the French right wing, under
General Pau, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, invaded
Alsace, fought a victorious action with an intrenched German force of
equal numbers and occupied Muelhausen and Kolmar. The news of the French
entry into the province lost in 1871 was received all over France with
wild enthusiasm. The mourning emblems on the Strasburg monument in Paris
were removed by the excited populace and replaced by the tricolor flag
and flowers in token of their joy. Muelhausen was soon after retaken by
the German forces, only to be recaptured later by the French and then
evacuated once more.

On the day of the first French occupation of Muelhausen France declared
war against Austria in consequence of the arrival of two Austrian army
corps on the Rhine to assist the main German army.

After the French occupation of Muelhausen a large German army was sent
to the front in Alsace-Lorraine and succeeded in dislodging the French
from that city, but not without severe fighting.

Two weeks after the war began the French defeated a Bavarian corps in
Alsace and for awhile General Pau more than held his own in that former
province of France. On August 21 the Germans drove back the French who
had invaded Lorraine, and occupied Luneville, ten miles inside the
French border.

About the same time the French reoccupied Muelhausen, after three days'
fighting around the city. Another French army was reported to be within
nineteen miles of Metz, But before the end of the month the French had
been compelled to evacuate both their former provinces. They continued
during September, however, to make frequent assaults on the German
frontier positions, but without regaining a sure