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When the "seventy-fives" spoke with their smart, sharp crack that always seems to say, "Take that!" and to add, with aristocratic insolence, "and be damned to you!" one could not guess what they were firing at.
They knew also that the reverberations from the direction of Meaux, that each moment grew more loud and savage, were the French "seventy-fives" whipping the gray column forward. Of what they felt the Germans did not speak. In silence they looked at each other, and in the eyes of Marie was bitterness and resolve.
Just before dawn, half a dozen batteries of "seventy-fives" came in a swift trot down the shelled road; the men leaned over on their steaming horses, the harnesses rattled and jingled, and the cavalcade swept on, outlined a splendid instant against the mortar flashes and the streaks of day. On my morning trip a soldier with bandaged arm was put beside me on the front seat.
"You're worth more alive than dead. We'll soon drive them from Chastel anyhow. The seventy-fives are doing the work." Bougainville had read the story of the battle aright. The great seventy-five-millimeter guns were too much for the German force.
Sitting comfortably at some cafe table, reading the papers with morning coffee, one saw the dawn coming up over the Oise and Aisne, heard the French "seventy-fives" and the heavy German siege-guns resume their roar; saw again, for the hundredth time, some hitherto unheard-of little man flinging away his life in one brief burst of glory.
But these patriotic and far-sighted men were powerless. The three years' service bill was the utmost result of their endeavors, and for six months after the war began they had not a gun larger than the famous Seventy-fives but those captured at the Battle of the Marne. As for the poor éclopés, there never was a clearer example of the weaker going to the wall and the devil taking the hindmost.
How do you like the workings of the seventy-fives? . . . What do you think of that now? . . ." In spite of the fatigue of the journey, Don Marcelo slept badly, excited by the thought that his son was not far away. An hour before daybreak, they left the village, in an automobile, guided by another official. On both sides of the road, they saw camps and camps.
From somewhere near us, above or below, to the right or left the "seventy-fives," as though aroused by the moon, began like terriers to bark viciously. The officer in the steel casque paused to listen, fixed their position, and named them. How he knew where they were, how he knew where he was himself, was all part of the mystery.
Rather it reminded you of a mining-camp during the spring freshet, and for all the attention the cavemen paid to them, the reports of their "seventy-fives" and the "Jack Johnsons" of the enemy bursting on Mont de Lorette might have come from miners blasting rock.
On the further side of the square noisy rolling sounds told me that the artillery was crossing the city, and mounting a doorstep, I beheld battery after battery of the famous Seventy-fives clattering out of sight over the road we had come by in the morning. When I got down, I found my way blocked by the 18th Chasseurs a cheval, who, four abreast and lance in hand, were setting out for battle.
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