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The sun was shining brilliantly on silent Mareuil and Chauconin, but Monthyon and Penchard were enveloped in smoke. From the eastern and western extremities of the plain we could see the artillery fire, but owing to the smoke hanging over the crest of the hill on the horizon, it was impossible to get an idea of the positions of the armies.
Once inside the little village we always speak of it as "le petit Chauconin " we found destruction enough. One whole street of houses was literally gutted. The walls stand, but the roofs are off and doors and windows gone, while the shells seem burned out. The destruction of the big farms seems to have been pretty complete.
On the other side of the Marne the undulating hill, with its wide stretch of fields, is dotted with little villages that peep out of the trees or are silhouetted against the sky-line, Vignely, Trilbardou, Penchard, Monthyon, Neufmortier, Chauconin, and in the foreground to the north, in the valley, just halfway between me and Meaux, lies Mareuil-on-the-Marne, with its red roofs, gray walls, and church spire.
When you come to see me I shall show you Quincy from the other side of the Marne, and never take you into its streets. Then you'll always remember it as a fairy town. It was not until we were entering into Chauconin that we saw the first signs of war. The approach through the fields, already ploughed, and planted with winter grain, looked the very last thing to be associated with war.
You can realize how near it is, and what an easy trip it will be in normal times, when I tell you that we left Esbly for Meaux at half past one only ten minutes by train and were back in the station at Meaux at quarter to four, and had visited Monthyon, Villeroy, Neufmontier, Penchard, Chauconin, Barcy, Chambry, and Vareddes. The authorities are not very anxious to have people go out there.
A little way out of Meaux, we took a road to the west for Chauconin, the nearest place to us which was bombarded, and from a point in the road I looked back across the valley of the Marne, and I saw a very pretty white town, with red roofs, lying on the hillside. I asked the chauffeur: "What village is that over there?" He glanced around and replied: "Quincy." It was my town.
I simply asked from where these people had come, and was told that they were evacuating Daumartin and all the towns on the plain between there and Meaux, which meant that Monthyon, Neufmortier, Penchard, Chauconin, Barcy, Chambry, in fact, all the villages visible from my garden were being evacuated by order of the military powers.
I ought not to have been surprised. Of course I knew that if I could see Chauconin so clearly from my garden, why, Chauconin could see me. Only, I had not thought of it. Amélie and I looked back with great interest. It did look so pretty, and it is not pretty at all the least pretty village on this side of the hill. "Distance" does, indeed, "lend enchantment."
They say the Germans slept there the night of September 4, and were driven out the next day by the French soixante-quinze, which trotted through Chauconin into Penchard by the road we had just come over. I enclose you a carte postale of a battery passing behind the apse of the village church, just as a guarantee of good faith. But all signs of the horrors of those days have been obliterated.
"How far off is it?" he questioned. I told him that it was about two miles, and Meaux was about the same distance beyond it. "What town is that?" he asked, pointing to the hill. I explained that the town on the horizon was Penchard not really a town, only a village; and lower down, between Penchard and Meaux, were Neufmortier and Chauconin. All this time he was studying his map. "Thank you.
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