Part 18

And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law, Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.

"It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions. The father effaced himself before the soldier. There was nothing to be thought of save the country."

Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.

XIV

THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE

It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.

On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south of Chalons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would permit the retreat of his armies.

If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.

He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army, under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet d'Esperey; then the little British army of three corps, under General Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.

So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received orders--at once terrible and immensely flattering--that he was to occupy the center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.

In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from Joffre the now historic message:

"The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way."

The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had, five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day's rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what shoes they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.

"They had marched under a torrid sky," says Louis Madelin, "on scorching roads, parched and suffocated with dust. In reality they moved with their hearts rather than with their legs. According to Pierre Lasserre's happy expression, 'Our bodies had beaten a retreat, but not our hearts,' . . . But when, worn out with fatigue, faces black with powder, blinded by the chalk of Champagne, almost dying, they learned Joffre's order announcing the offensive, then the faces of our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed with joy. They fought with tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such strength, for their hearts were filled with faith and hope."

At daybreak on Sunday, the 6th, Foch pitched his headquarters in a modern chateau near the little village of Pleurs, which you probably will not find on any map except a military one, but it is some six miles southeast of Sezanne. And the front assigned to Foch ran from Sezanne to the Camp de Mailly, twenty-five miles east by a little south. The Marne was twenty-five miles to north of him. Between him and its south bank were many towns and villages; the clay pocket (ten miles long) called the Marshes of St. Gond, but far from marshy in that parching heat; and north of that the forest of Epernay. His vanguards were north of the marshes. But as that Sunday wore on, the Prussian Guards drove Foch's Angevins and Vendeans of the Ninth Corps back and occupied the marshes. The Bretons on the east of Foch's line were obliged to dislodge, and the Moroccans and Forty-second Division had to yield on Foch's left.

Thus, at nightfall of the first day's fighting, Foch's new army had given ground practically everywhere.

The next day the German attack became fiercer, and it seemed that more ground must be yielded.

That was the day when Foch made his memorable deduction: "They are trying to throw us back with such fury I am sure that means things are going badly for them elsewhere and they are seeking compensation."

He was right! Von Kluck was retiring in a northeasterly direction under Manoury's blows; and even Von Buelow (whom Foch faced) was withdrawing parts of his troops from the line at Foch's left.

But the attempt to break through the center Foch held, waxed fiercer as the Germans realized the strength opposing them on their right.

And on Tuesday, the 8th, Foch was unable to hold--save at certain points--and had to move his headquarters eleven miles south, to Plancy.

He had now reached the Aube, beyond which Joffre had decreed that he must not retire. On its north bank his gallant army must, if it could not do otherwise, "allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way."

On that evening he sent Major Requin to the Forty-second Division with orders for the morrow. The most incredible orders!

The enemy had found his point of least resistance--on his right wing. He ought to strengthen that wing, but he could not. All the reserves were engaged--and the enemy knew it as well as he did. And it is a fixed principle of war not to withdraw active troops from one part of the line to strengthen another.

Only one part of his army had had any success that day: Toward evening the Forty-second Division and the Moroccans had made an irresistible lunge forward and driven the enemy to the north edge of the marshes.

They were weary--those splendid troops--but they were exalted; they had advanced!

Foch believes in the power of the spirit. He appealed to the Forty-second to do an extraordinary thing--to march, weary as it was, from left to right of his long line and brace the weak spot. And to cover up the gap their withdrawal would make he asked General Franchet d'Esperey to stretch out the front covered by his right wing and adjoining Foch's left.

In a letter to me, Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Requin gives some graphic bits descriptive of that historic errand. He was a sort of liaison officer between General Grossetti, commanding the Forty-second Division, and the latter's chief, General Foch, his special duty being to carry General Foch's orders to General Grossetti and to keep the army chief informed, each evening, how his commands were being carried out.