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Now, Padre, I have told you the great thing. What does it matter what happens to me, if only Jack Curtis's "feeling" comes true? It is two days since I wrote, Padre; and I have come back to Compiègne from a world of unnatural silence and desolation. Day before yesterday it was Roye and Nesle; the Château of Ham; Jussy, Chauny and Prince Eitel Friedrich's pavilion.
It was a far-away sound, but quickly it grew louder and drew nearer: at first a buzzing as of all the bees in France mobilized in a bee-barrage. Then the buzzing became a roar. I knew directly what it was: enemy aeroplanes. I could not see them yet, but they must be close. If they were flying very low, to search Chauny for visitors, I might be seen if I moved.
Laon, La Fère, Coucy-le-Château, Chauny, Noyon, Ham, and Péronne were the objects of his reconnoitering flights. War acts more poignantly, more directly upon a soldier whose own home is immediately behind him. If the front were pierced in the sector which had been intrusted to him, his own people would be exposed. So he becomes their sentinel.
There was a manufacturing district about Chauny, and after that the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another. Only, here and there, we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner.
But Le Cateau had taken the sting out of the German pursuit, and touch was at last regained with French forces to the east, with a newly-formed corps under D'Amade to the west, and with a Sixth French army which Maunoury was collecting on the Somme. On the evening of Friday the 28th Smith-Dorrien reached the Oise between Chauny and Noyon and Haig at La Fère.
"I had meant not to mention it. But perhaps it is best to tell, and then you may all choose whether you go to Chauny or not. There is a certain risk at this time of day, or a little later. You know we are close to the front here, and enemy aeroplanes fly nearly every afternoon over Chauny toward dusk. They hope to catch some important personage, and they come expressly to 'spot' automobiles.
My sentry turn began immediately, and the lieutenant posted me at a loophole. He made me put my face to the hole and explained to me that there was a wooded slope, right in front of us, of which the bottom was occupied by the enemy; and to the right of us, three hundred yards away, the Chauny road "They're there."
On the 6th the French took Ham and Chauny, and on the 9th they were once more across the Crozat canal. Mangin was pushing his way towards the St. Gobain massif, and French and American troops were driving the Germans back from the Vesle across the Aisne. It looked as though winter might come with the line of battle much where it was before the German offensive began in March.
Chauny is the sight most pitiful of all. Would you perhaps wish to avoid it?" "What about you, Mother?" Father Beckett wanted to know. But Mother had no wish to avoid Chauny. She was not able to believe that anything could be sadder than Roye, or Nesle, or Ham, or more grim than Jussy. "He doesn't want to take us to Chauny," Brian whispered to me.
The German tide rolled sullenly and slowly back for another fortnight. Péronne, Nesle, and Chaulnes fell on the 18th, Chauny and Ham on the 19th, and on the 20th French cavalry were within five miles of St. Quentin.
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