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Updated: May 31, 2025
He said he knew it.... I will send you a photograph of my 'coucou' with its nine bruises: it is superb." The next day, June 18, it was his mother who received his confidences. The enemy had bombarded Villers-Cotterets with a long-distance gun which had to be discovered.
He often brought parcels, and occasionally people from the village who wanted to see W. sometimes a blind piano-tuner who came from Villers-Cotterets. He was very kind to the poor blind man, helped him down most carefully from the diligence, and always brought him through the park gates to the lodge, where he delivered him over to Antoine. It was curious to see the blind man at work.
My first experience of country life in France, about thirty years ago, was in a fine old château standing high in pretty, undulating, wooded country close to the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and overlooking the great plains of the Oise big green fields stretching away to the sky-line, broken occasionally by little clumps of wood, with steeples rising out of the green, marking the villages and hamlets which, at intervals, are scattered over the plains, and in the distance the blue line of the forest.
I was sent round to a place, the name of which I cannot remember, to a certain division; then I struck north along a straight road through the forest to Villers-Cotterets. The town was crammed with French motor-lorries and crowded with French troops, who greeted me hilariously as I rode through to Véze.
The British fell back from the Aisne and the Oise through the forests of Villers-Cotterets and Compiègne towards the Marne. At Néry on 1 September a battery of Royal Horse Artillery was almost wiped out, and the guns were only saved by a gallant cavalry charge of the 1st Brigade; and on the same day a hard rearguard defence had to be fought by the 4th Guards Brigade.
So far from wishing longer to offer him the crown, he struck it forever from his head, and turned against him. "Soon after this event, Her Majesty, in tears, came to tell me that the King, having had positive proof of the agency of the Duc d'Orleans in the riots of Versailles, had commenced some proceedings, which had given the Duke the alarm, and exiled him to Villers-Cotterets.
As I walked far beyond the rails from the town of Crepy-en-Valois, which had suffered the ravages of the German legions and on through the forest of Villers-Cotterets and over fields of turnips and stubble, which only a few days ago were trampled by French and British troops following the enemy upon their line of retreat, to the north side of the Aisne, the great guns of our heavy artillery shocked the air with thunderous reverberations.
This was launched on the 9th between Montdidier and Noyon, and its purpose was to push southwards and envelop the French defences and forces in the forests of Compiègne and Villers-Cotterets which had stopped the German westward advance on Paris between the Aisne and the Marne. It was a dangerous threat, but this time Foch was prepared.
The wild boars and stags never stayed very long in our woods went through merely to the forest of Villers-Cotterets so it was most important to know the exact moment of their passage, and there was great pride and excitement when one was taken. Another interesting moment was when the coupe de l'année was being made. Parts of the woods were cut down regularly every year, certain squares marked off.
There we slept comfortably in the lodge of the chateau, all, that is, except Grimers, who had been seized with a puncture just outside the main hotel in Villers-Cotterets.
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