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Updated: May 9, 2025
Since the British had butted the Germans back from the Petit Morin at La Trétoire, these three days of fighting in the battles of Coulommiers and Montmirail had won the Allies advanced positions across two rivers, and had so weakened the German right that it was compelled to fall back on the main army and forego its important strategic advantage on the east bank of the Ourcq River.
But in the Battle of the Ourcq, the distances are comparatively small, the actions comparatively simple and intelligible, while all the circumstances of the particular struggle are so dramatic, and the stakes at issue so vast, that every incident is, as it were, writ large, and the memory absorbs them more easily.
M. Surville, engineer of the Ourcq Canal, who was later to become Honore's brother-in-law, suggested a former professor of his at the Polytechnic School. "My father accepted this dean of literature as decisive judge. "After a conscientious reading, the good old man declared that the author of Cromwell had better follow any other career in the world than that of literature."
The allied armies are more than holding their own on the vast line between the Ourcq and Verdun. Meanwhile all precautions are being taken by the Military Government of Paris for an eventual siege. The Bois de Boulogne resembles a cattle ranch.
"Retreating to the northeast on the Ourcq." I could have kissed him. Amelie did. She simply threw both arms round his neck and smacked him on both cheeks, and he said, "Thank you, ma'am," quite prettily; and, like the nice clean English boy he was, he blushed. "You can be perfectly calm," he said. "Look behind you."
By nightfall our forces had reached a line north of the Ourcq, extending from Oulchy-le-Chateau to Longpont.
The Becketts had hardly heard of the Ourcq. As for me, I'd forgotten that part in the drama of September, 1914. I knew that there was an Ourcq a canal, or a river, or both, with a bit of Paris sticking to its banks: knew it vaguely, as one knows and forgets that one's friends' faces have profiles. But Brian's words brought back the whole story to my mind in a flash.
I remembered how Von Kluck was trapped like a rat, in the couloir of the Ourcq, by the genius of Gallieni, and the glorious coöperation of General Manoury and the dear British "contemptibles" under General French. It was a desperate adventure that to try and take the Germans in the flank; and Gallieni's advisers told him there were not soldiers enough in his command to do it.
During the day of September 6th Manoury made headway toward the Ourcq. On the following day he advanced at a lesser pace on its left bank, taking and then losing the villages of Marcilly and Chambry murderous struggles maintained amid terrible heat.
"The fighting along the Ourcq continued on this day and was of the most sanguinary character, for the Germans had massed a great force of artillery along this line. Very few of their infantry were seen by the French. The French Fifth Army also made a fierce attack on the Germans in Montmirail, regaining that place.
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