We alighted from the car in a deserted street, with all the shutters of
shops that had not been torn down by shell-fire closed. Soissons was
as silent as the grave, within easy range of many enemy guns. War
seemed only for the time being in this valley bottom shut in from the
roar of artillery a few miles away, except for a French battery which
was firing methodically and slowly, its shells whizzing toward the ridge
back of the town.

The next thing that one wanted most was to go into that battery and
see the soixante-quinze and their skilful gunners. Our statesman said
that he would try to locate it. We thought that it was in the direction of
the river, that famous Aisne which has since given its name to the
longest siege-line in history; a small, winding stream in the bottom of
an irregular valley. Both bridges across it had been cut by the
Germans. If that battery were on the other side under cover of any
one of a score of blots of foliage we could not reach it. Another shot--
and we were not sure that the battery was not on the opposite side of
the town; a crack out of the landscape: this was modern artillery fire to
one who faced it. Apparently the guns of the battery were scattered,
according to the accepted practice, and from the central firing-station
word to fire was being passed first to one gun and then to another.

Beside the buttress of one bridge lay two still figures of Algerian
Zouaves. These were fresh dead, fallen in the taking of the town.
Only two men! There were dead by thousands which one might see
in other places. These two had leaped out from cover to dash forward
and bullets were waiting for them. They had rolled over on their
backs, their rigid hands still in the position of grasping their rifles
after the manner of crouching skirmishers.