riven out the next day by the French soixante-quinze, which
trotted through Chauconin into Penchard by the road we had just
come over.

I enclose you a carte postale of a battery passing behind the apse of
the village church, just as a guarantee of good faith.

But all signs of the horrors of those days have been obliterated.
Penchard is the town in which the Germans exercised their taste for
wilful nastiness, of which I wrote you weeks ago. It is a pretty little
village, beautifully situated, commanding the slopes to the Marne on
one side, and the wide plains of Barcy and Chambry on the other. It is
prosperous looking, the home of sturdy farmers and the small
rentiers. It has an air of humble thrift, with now and then a pretty
garden, and here and there suggestions of a certain degree of
greater prosperity, an air which, in France, often conceals
unexpected wealth.

You need not look the places up unless you have a big map. No
guide-book ever honored them.

From Penchard we ran a little out to the west at the foot of the hill, on
top of which stand the white walls of Montyon, from which, on
September 5, we had seen the first smoke of battle.

I am sure that I wrote some weeks ago how puzzled I was when I
read Joffre's famous ordre du jour, at the beginning of the Marne
offensive, to find that it was dated September 6, whereas we had
seen the battle begin on the 5th. Here I found what I presume to be
the explanation, which proves that the offensive along the rest of the
line on the 6th had been a continuation simply of what we saw that
Saturday afternoon.

At the foot of the hill crowned by the walls of Montyon lies Villeroy--
today the objective point for patriotic pilgrimages. There, on the 5th of
September, the 276th Regiment was preparing its soup for lunch,
when, suddenly, from the trees on the heights, German shells fell
amongst them, and food was forgotten, while the French at St.
Soupplet on the other side of the hill, as well as those at Villeroy,
suddenly found themselves in the thick of a fight--the battle we saw.

They told me at Villeroy that many of the men in the regiments
engaged were from this region, and here the civilians dropped their
work in the fields and snatched up guns which the dead or wounded
soldiers let fall and entered the fight beside their uniformed neighbors.
I give you that picturesque and likely detail for what it is worth.

At the foot of the hill between Montyon and Villero