A troop train came north in the morning, and the Germans flung the men against the old chateau, up the steep path. The Frenchmen slaughtered them; they built a barricade of German bodies before the very muzzles of their guns. And more trains came, and were held up by the destroyed bridge. The dammed river began to rise, and grumble, and fret and fume.... The pioneers, down by the ruined bridge, strove fruitlessly under the hail of balls. The second day, the Germans brought guns to bear. At first, there was only shrapnel, and it spattered harmlessly. But after that came high explosive; and each great shell, detonating amid the ruined walls of the chateau, turned every stone and pebble into a missile that swept to right and left and all about in a storm of death. When three hundred men are huddled in a narrow area, a single shell will kill half of them. This happened, on that day. An hour after the bombardment began, not a hundred men remained alive upon the top of the little peak; an hour after that, scarce fifty remained, ... But while it was easy to kill the first hundred, and while it was not difficult to kill the second hundred, it was very hard indeed to complete the extermination of the force. A dozen men may live where a hundred would perish; and at noon, the riflemen in the ruins of the old chateau still kept the ruined bridge cleared of men and none could toil there. By that time, the congestion on the southern bank of the river had become so great that that tide overflowed. And Jacques Fontaine, with a scarf bound around his chest to crush back the blood that was leaking from his great body, could see and hear the roar of the French guns, ten miles away, harassing the fleeing enemy.... By mid-afternoon, French shells began to fall amid the huddle on the southern bank of the river; and at nightfall, the Germans broke, there.... They broke; they poured across the stream, wading, swimming, drowning. They broke in flight to escape the merciless guns. And the French planes overhead till dark was fully fallen marked their going, and signalled the guns that harassed the fleeing men. Before that, the Frenchmen had been silenced; the Frenchmen of Jacques Fontaine, in the old chateau. There were some few of them still unwounded; there were others who breathed and groaned as they slowly died. There were not enough of them to keep the bridge clear; but that duty no longer was required of them. They had held up a division, till the French armies could come up and rout it. And the Germans, flinging one last charge against the old chateau, drew off to the north and left Jacques Fontaine and his men, masters of the field. VII I was with the army that came up to that bridge at dawn, my friends. And I was one of those who saw, floating in the first light above the ruined walls of the old chateau, a flicker of glorious color.... A banner, floating there....