Sir John French had his
headquarters for the night in Creil. English, Irish, Scottish
soldiers, stragglers from units still keeping some kind of order, were
coming in, bronzed, dusty, parched with thirst, with light wounds tied
round with rags, with blistered feet. French soldiers, bearded, dirty,
thirsty as dogs, crowded the station platforms. They, too, had been
retreating and retreating. A company of sappers had blown up forty
bridges of France. Under a gas-lamp in a foul-smelling urinal I copied
out the diary of their officer. Some spiritual faith upheld these men.
"Wait," they said. "In a few days we shall give them a hard knock.
They will never get Paris. Jamais de la vie!" . . .
In Beauvais there was hardly a living soul when three English
correspondents went there, after escape from Amiens, now in German
hands. A tall cuirassier stood by some bags of gunpowder, ready to
blow up the bridge. The streets were strewn with barbed wire and
broken bottles . . . In Paris there was a great fear and solitude,
except where grief-stricken crowds stormed the railway stations for
escape and where French and British soldiers--stragglers all--drank
together, and sang above their broken glasses, and cursed the war and
the Germans.
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