_'Neath Verdun_ PREFATORY NOTE The following work has been scrutinized by the French Military Authorities, and the word (Censored) will be found in the text to indicate the eliminations they have deemed it expedient to make. _'NEATH VERDUN_ _August--October, 1914_ _By Maurice Genevoix._ _With a Preface by Ernest Lavisse_ _TRANSLATED BY_ _H. GRAHAME RICHARDS_ _Translator of_: "_Hunters and Hunting in the Arctic_" (_Duc d'Orleans_) "_Expansion of Modern Germany_" _etc., etc._ "_Geographical Distribution of Capital_" (_Prof. A. Vergogni_) _LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO._ _PATERNOSTER ROW_ :: :: _1916_ Dedication TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND ROBERT PORCHON Mentioned in Army Orders for "admirable bravery" KILLED AT LES EPARGES THE 20th OF FEBRUARY, 1915 CONTENTS I.--CONTACT IS ESTABLISHED 1 II.--THE CROSSING OF THE MEUSE 19 III.--THE RETREAT 31 IV.--THE DAYS OF THE MARNE 44 V.--BEHIND THE CROWN PRINCE'S ARMY 118 VI.--IN THE WOODS 160 VII.--THE ARMIES GO TO EARTH 205 PREFACE The author of this work, Mr. Maurice Genevoix, is a second-year student at the Ecole Normale, Paris. Having finished the second year of his course and, incidentally, completed a study "on Maupassant," he was in a position to regard with pleasant anticipation the vacation due to fall in July, 1914--a month later he received his baptism of fire, and of what a fire! He supplies us with an invaluable picture of the war. In the first place, the writer is endowed with astonishing powers of observation; he sees all in a glance, he hears everything. The intense power of concentration he possesses enables him instantly to seize upon all essentials of a particular incident or scene, and so to harmonize them as to produce a picture true to life. Nothing escapes him--the song or hiss of bullets, the diverse notes of hurtling shells, the explosions, the shatterings--every tone of the infernal uproar; the breezes that pass, those that follow the explosions, those that have caressed the bodies of the dead "Whose frightful odour poisons the air;" the faces of men in moments of great crisis, their words, their dialogues; and, finally, the changing appearances of inanimate things, for are not actions for ever associated in the mind with the changing aspects of nature? The pre-eminent, outstanding merit of the work, however, consists in the never failing sincerity of its author.