A graphic picture of the artillery side of the fighting on the
Ourcq was given by one of the artillery officers detached from the
British force.
"Meaux was still a town of blank shutters and empty streets when
we got there this morning," he wrote, "but the French sappers had
thrown a plank gangway across the gap in the ruined old bridge,
built in A. D. 800, that had survived all the wars of France, only
to perish at last in this one.
"Smack, smack, smack, smack go the French guns; and then, a few
seconds later, four white mushrooms of smoke spring up over the far
woods and slowly the pop, pop, pop, pop, of the distant explosions
comes back to you. But now it is the German gunners' turn. Bang!
go his guns, two miles away; there is a moment of eerie and
uncomfortable silence--uncomfortable because there is just a chance
they might have altered their range--and then, quite close by, over
the wood where the battery is, come the crashes of the bursting
shells. They sound like a Titan's blows on a gigantic kettle filled
with tons of old iron.
"At Trilport there is a yawning gap, where one arch of the railway
bridge used to be, with a solitary bent rail still lying across
it. And, among the wreckage of the bridge below, lying on its side
and more than half beneath the water, is the smashed and splintered
ruin of a closed motor car.
"Beyond the town was a ridge on which the French batteries were
posted.
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