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Updated: June 2, 2025
He frequently illustrated his words with a pointing finger. The two infantrymen could hear nothing until finally he asked: "What troops can you spare?" The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant. "Well," he said, "I had to order in th' 12th to help th' 76th, an' I haven't really got any. But there's th' 304th. They fight like a lot 'a mule drivers. I can spare them best of any."
So defective was its firing arrangement then that after a heavy storm only a feeble sputter came from whole battalions of foot: and on those two eventful days the honours lay with the artillery and l'arme blanche. As for the infantrymen, they could effect little except in some wild snatches of bayonet work at close quarters.
General Rundle's task is a colossal one, and any sane man would think that gigantic efforts would be made to keep him amply supplied with food for his soldiers. But such is not the case. The men are absolutely starving. Many of the infantrymen are so weak that they can barely stagger along under the weight of their soldierly equipment.
There were artillerymen, infantrymen, marines, in training for the naval air-service, cavalrymen, all wearing the uniforms of the arm to which they originally belonged. No one was dressed in a uniform which distinguished him as an aviator; and upon making inquiry, I found that there is no official dress for this branch of the service.
The infantry fell back, leaving the artillery to do the fighting without one musket to protect us. We stayed as long as we could, when we finally had to follow the footsteps of the infantrymen. The fight there was none nothing but a big scare and run. General Forrest sent General Bateman with his division to Nashville, but kept our battery with him.
But the Pinega artillery and machine guns and the stout barricades of the Pelegor and Kuligor infantrymen held out, though one of the gallant Russian officers, who had won the admiration of the Americans in the winter by continuing daily on duty with his machine gun company after he had been wounded severely in the arm, now fell among his men.
Then off we went, and hitting the main road just ahead of our muddled column, halted at the desolate little village of Estrées. It now began to rain. Soon the column came pouring past, so miserably and so slowly, lorries, transport, guns, limbers, small batches of infantrymen, crowds of stragglers.
First there were only infantrymen, whose rifles and banners could just be seen from some of our lookout posts on the highest roofs. But presently came artillery and cavalry. Everybody could see those, although the men bent low. Unendingly they streamed past, until the alarm became general. Even in Peking, quite close to us, there were thousands of soldiery.
I breathed, coughed, and shook my arms and legs, and was dumbfounded to find that all my faculties functioned normally...." Guynemer did not tell us so much; but, as a mathematician, he calculated his chances. He too had switched off, and with the greatest sang-froid superintended, so to speak, his fall. Its result was no less magical. The infantrymen had observed this rainfall of airplanes.
Behind the barn we found a whole pile of new knapsacks the flimsy play-soldier knapsacks of the French infantrymen, not half so heavy or a third so substantial as the heavy sacks of the Germans, which are all bound with straps and covered on the back side with undressed red bullock's hide. Until now we had seen, in all the silent, ruined village, no human being.
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