CHAPTER VII
THE PERSISTENT BOMBARDMENT
ON my return the familiar beauties of Paris acquired a new and precious meaning. It was possible more accurately to estimate the value of that epic moment when Von Kluck's flank was turned and the sinister invasion broken almost within sight of the fortifications. So I got a military permit and visited the region where Manoury's taxicab army flung itself on the extreme German right.
The flags waving over the graves were thicker than in Lorraine. They were like a strange and colourful grain. And irregularly scattered behind the pierced walls of the graveyard in each little village were the sepulchres of soldiers, buried where they had fallen.
Behind an ugly breach in a cemetery wall was the tomb of an officer, set at an angle.
“The captain, you see," one of the natives told me, was leaning against the wall watching the effect of his men's fire on the enemy when the shell fell just there. We came out in the evening and buried him."
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