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"You cannot have followed the newspapers in your ... retreat, my dear Captain Okewood," he replied, "or surely you would have read the afflicting intelligence that Count Rachwitz, A.D.C. to Field-Marshal von Mackensen, was killed by a shell that fell into the Brigade Head-quarters where he was lunching at Predeal.
On the same day a Rumanian official report gave a long list of villages and towns which the Rumanians had taken beyond the frontier, their Fourth Army Corps also having taken 740 prisoners. Within two days Averescu had advanced so rapidly that he was in possession of Petroseny, north of the Vulkan Pass, and of Brasso, beyond Predeal Pass.
The Germans had not only been checked in the Buzau and the Predeal Passes, but they had suffered a genuine setback there, being forced to retire. This victory was important in that Predeal Pass had been saved, for not only was this pass close to Bucharest, but through it ran a railroad and a good highway, crossing the mountains almost due south of Brasso at a height of a little over 3,000 feet.
Since coffee that morning the lonely train had offered nothing more nourishing than the endless Hungarian wheat-fields, with their rows of peasants, men and women, working comfortably together, and rows of ploughs creeping with almost incredible leisure behind black water-buffalo cattle; but as we rolled down into Predeal through the rain, there, at last, in the dim station lamps, glittered the brass letters and brown paint of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits and something to eat.
"Francis," ...she spoke almost in a whisper ... "my life in this country is over," ... and she touched her widow's weeds.... "Karl was killed at Predeal three weeks ago.... You know as well as I do that I am involved in this affair as much as you and Des ... and I will share the risk if only you will take me away with you ... that is if you ..." She faltered.
Berlin and Vienna both admitted that the Rumanians had recaptured Rosca, a frontier height east of the Predeal Pass. On November 6, 1916, came the news from Bucharest that the Rumanian and Russian forces in northern Dobrudja had again assumed the offensive and that Mackensen's line was giving way; and that in retiring his troops had burned the villages of Daeni, Gariot, Rosman, and Gaidar.
A line running parallel with almost the entire front enabled him to shift his forces back and forth, wherever the contingencies of the situation made them needed most. By the 12th he was facing the Rumanians in the passes. Heavy fighting then began developing at Torzburg, Predeal, and Buzau Passes. Finally the Rumanians were forced back toward Crasna on the frontier.
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