Meaux
The train crawled out of Paris through peaceful suburbs and alongside the quiet waters of the Marne. From the windows of the villas, bedding was hung to air; and in the gardens, women were busy gathering vegetables and preparing the ground for the winter. Nothing could have looked more peaceful, more suggestive of French middle-class prosperity. Even the sentries at the bridges failed to give a martial air to the scene; for there is something essentially domestic in the silhouette of the good territorial, who, in homely blouse or comfortable overcoat, grasps the deadly rifle with its bayonet point and wears the military kepi with distinction. It needed the troop trains on the sidings, and the trucks of wounded passing slowly by, to bring home to us the real situation. From the sidings came a storm of gay voices and a clamour for the daily papers. The morning toilette (and that of the French soldier on duty is not elaborate) was going on in all its stages, and the men looked well and happy. But from the trains of wounded there was no sound of life, only here and there a glimpse of a bandaged head or a recumbent figure.
Before reaching Esbly we crossed one of the bridges over the river which had been blown up to prevent the march of the enemy. In a week, the engineers had reared up an iron skeleton, and it was across that we passed. As we were on the steps of the train (one of those which has roof carriages) we could look sheer down into the water as we made our very slow way over, and the effect was both wonderful and dizzy. Later on, we crossed another hastily erected structure of the same kind, and we were told that it was there that the train of wounded had fallen into the river one dark, wet night during the battle of the Marne. One could see the scene in imagination, and the beautiful countryside as we saw it then looked soberly magnificent, as if in memory of those sixty stretchers, each with its human burden, which were drowned in the deepest part of the river. All night long men were working to save others, standing for hours in water up to their waists, and, in the darkness, trying to find ambulances to relieve them of their loads. It was only a week or two ago, but time has already wiped out those marks by making others; and now, where men were working to save their fellow-men from drowning, there is a colony of engineers working night and day to build up the bridge and restore communications on the line to their normal conditions.
At Meaux, we found that the bridge by the picturesque old mill had been blown up, and the river below it blocked with overturned washing and bathing houses. A little further down, at Trilport, is another broken bridge, which was the scene of a German tragedy. Three officers in a motor-car drove straight into the river, not knowing that the bridge had been destroyed. They were all drowned, and a friend of ours was the owner, for a short time, of a postcard written by one of the officers to his wife in Germany, with tender messages to his children. The wife should now be in possession of the card, and perhaps she knows of the death of her husband.
As we mounted the steep streets of Meaux and came in view of the cathedral, we saw a little group of people surrounding a splendid figure in brilliant magenta robes and purple biretta. It was the celebrated Bishop of Meaux, whose name is blessed and beloved by every poor man and woman in the town. When the civil officials fled, the bishop stayed, and not only did he stay, but he fed his people and tended the sick and wounded who were brought into the city from all sides. His clear, ringing voice and mobile face were pleasant sounds and sights; and the little metal breloque that he gave us will be always counted among our most precious possessions, even as his gay smile will be among our few pleasant memories of the war.
The town of Meaux has not suffered at German hands, for it was never bombarded.. A few miserable shells, as a good territorial told us, fell in the town, but the damage they did was not serious. It is all around Meaux that the work was done, and as we drove from one village to another, passing along the interminable poplar-lined roads, there was not a mile of the way but held traces of the dreadful struggle that had been carried on there but a week or two before. Where the armies had camped, unmistakable signs were visible; empty tins, bits of clothing, black spots where Tommy's kettle had been boiled, places where Tommy had done 'a bit of washing,' and wherever the Germans had been there were multitudes of empty bottles. The trees were lying on the roadsides cut clean off by shells; trunks were splintered, and branches were burnt. Great holes all over the fields showed where shells had pierced the ground, and everywhere there were empty shells, and sometimes full ones.
Article de Edgar Bréeld.