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A DAY AT ECLISFONTAINE 93
This little action, which is but a link in the great chain, is
causing considerable liveliness in Eclisfontaine. First the
ambulance wagons of the field hospitals dash forward at full
speed to the point where the fight has taken place. Then
comes another body of infantry reinforcements, evidently
to form a nucleus round which the units scattered by the
fighting may be able to assemble. Small Uhlan patrols with
vertical lances seem to be riding at a gallop along the roads
and paths leading to Varennes. At last come the steaming
and fragrant kitchen wagons with their pleased and grinning
cooks perched high aloft on the top of their paraphernalia.
But on the slopes south of us appear little groups of eight
to ten men with stretchers, accompanied by collies whose
duty it is to track the wounded lying lost and abandoned in
ditches and ravines. When the dog discovers a wounded
soldier, he stays with him and barks until the ambulance
men come up with their stretchers.
The French artillery fire has now slackened, owing to their
having been compelled to move further to the rear in pro-
portion as the Germans have advanced.
Varennes, the little town where on June the 22nd, 1791,
Louis XVI. was recognised, captured and taken back to Paris,
is now in flames, and a brownish yellow column of smoke
from its burning houses ascends into the sky. Near it Cheppy
and further on Boureuilles are also burning. Cheppy church
defiantly rears its spire aloft through the wreaths of smoke
and sparks.
To the west of us is the broad valley of the River Aire, a
tributary of the Aisne. Varennes is situated on the Aire, the
eastern bank of which is lined by the famous Argonne forest.
In the south, through the valley, Wiirttemberg troops are
advancing on Varennes, and a portion of their right flank is
busy on the fringe of the Argonne. Their advance is plainly
discernible through the tripod telescope, which now and
again I was allowed to look through. But I needed no
glasses to see the little white murderous wreaths of smoke
which arose when the shrapnel exploded right over the heads
of the Wiirttembergers. They were answered by German spurts
of fire, visible a little further away and more to the left.
An infantry ammunition column, which had found shelter
behind the slight rise south of us, is now ordered to move
forward. The nearest way would be to follow in a south-
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