United States or Latvia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
American troops the 5th and 6th of November had advanced to within five miles of the main communication line of the Germans between Metz, Mezieres, Hirson and the north. After destroying the bridge connecting Stenay with Laneuville, the Germans had opened the locks of the Ardennes canal and flooded the river to a width of about two-thirds of a mile.
On the next day, at Hirson, which was another of our stopping points on the journey to the front, we saw the joint funeral of seven men leaving the hospital where they had died during the preceding twelve hours, and I shan't forget that picture either. There was a vista bounded by a stretch of one of those unutterably bleak backways of a small and shabby French town.
Strategy pointed conclusively to the Belgian route, and its advantages were clinched by the fact that France was relying on the illusory scrap of paper. Her dispositions assumed an attack in Lorraine, and her northern fortifications round Lille, Maubeuge, and Hirson were feeble compared with those of Belfort, Toul, and Verdun.
This provision somewhat weakened the less essential advance of the French in the centre between the Aisne and the Oise, but the progress of the American wing left the Germans no option but retreat in the centre, and three French armies under Débeney, Mangin, and Guillaumat were rapidly converging upon Hirson.
"Armistice commission will meet November 10 at Hirson, France," read the message, flashed to every vessel in the fleet. All that day and the next, every man in the fleet waited anxiously for further word of the approaching armistice conference. None came. Neither had any word been received on the evening of November 10.
"So am I," Jack agreed, "all that we can get without danger of causing a hitch in the armistice proceedings." "Seems to me," said Frank, "that by this time we should have had some word of the proceedings at Hirson to-day." "It would seem so, that's a fact. However, I guess we will get the information all in good time." "That's all right. But I'm anxious to know what's going on."
The Belgians were practically pushed out of all but Antwerp, and the Germans were rapidly approaching the natural defences of France running from Lille to Verdun, through Valenciennes, Mauberge, Hirson and Mezières. Things were beginning to look serious, although we still insisted on believing that the Germans could not break through.
The remains of the Hunding position were taken on 5 November, and Marle and Guise were captured farther north-west. Vervins, Montcornet, and Réthel fell on the 6th. Hirson and Mezières were reached and the Belgian frontier crossed on the 9th. On the 10th the Italians entered Rocroi, and on the morning of the 11th the Allies were converging on Namur.
The other three were killed in the first six weeks of fighting. Our own companion, Captain Mannesmann, heard only the day before, when we stopped at Hirson just over the border from Belgium that his cousin had won the Iron Cross for conspicuous courage, and within three days more was to hear that this same cousin had been sniped from ambush during a night raid down the left wing.
When they stopped for an hour at Hirson, men and women with tricolour badges upon the platform distributed cakes and glasses of beer to the thirsty soldiers, and there was much cheerfulness. 'Such good, cool beer it was, he wrote. 'I had had nothing to eat nor drink since Epsom. A number of monoplanes, 'like giant swallows, he notes, were scouting in the pink evening sky.
Word Of The Day