XIV
THE FIRES BEYOND CHÂTEAU TIIIERRY
Our movement from the Baccarat positions was not as simple as we had expected. The road for its entire length was perfectly visible to Hun airmen, so it was advisable to march at night. The column was late starting, and it crawled, as such columns do, on traffic laden roads. Our schedule called for a bivouac at Magnières during the day of August 2nd. But it was long after daylight when the regiment arrived, anxiously glancing aloft; and by the time horses and men were settled the hour of departure was at hand.
Again the roads were packed, and progress was snail- like. It was nearly noon of the 3rd before the column, dusty and tired, entered its regrouping area on the Moselle. We hadn't imagined the movement of a single division could be so complicated and tedious.
That march, however, was not without its valuable impressions. For the most part it lay through the district of Lorraine, destroyed by the Germans during their retreat after the battle of the Couronne de Nancy, the eastern phase of the battle of the Marne. The smashed villages were now sketchily inhabited, and the fields were under cultivation again, but about this resurrection still clung an appearance and an odor of death.
Our own area was just beyond high tide of the Huns. To us after that journey it was impressively undisturbed and peaceful. We felt that our ugly carriages parked in fields along the Moselle were out of place in such a landscape.
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