100 Years Ago; The Battle of the Marne

One little gun at Nery stalled the month-long German advance and gave the French and British troops just a little breathing space before the Germans made their final push to take Paris.  Hundreds of taxis ferried troops north to fight, and the German army was ultimately stopped and pushed back.  Both sides began digging in, and trying to out-flank the other as they pushed to the sea.  No-one had a clue what the next four years would bring. Click Here and Here for a couple of good writeups of this historic battle, and consider the scale of the beginning of the Great War.  This one battle claimed about 100,000 killed on both sides.  The French and Germans both had 1/4 million casualties, and the British had nearly 13,000.

Stories of German atrocities began to come out, and they were used to good advantage by the Brits and French as recruiting tools.  Deniers abound yet today, and I don't know how much to believe.  We see unspeakable atrocities today in the current world wide war, and our news people are doing a gallant job of ignoring and hiding the extent of evil being used against the West.

Here is what Robert Service had to say about it; and you must remember that he was there, and would be on the Western Front for two years.


"In the streets of the city I see French soldiers wearing the fourragere. It is a cord of green, yellow or red, and corresponds to the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille militaire and the Legion of Honor. The red is the highest of all, and has been granted only to one or two regiments. This incident was told to me by a man who saw it:

The Blood-Red Fourragere

What was the blackest sight to me
Of all that campaign?
A naked woman tied to a tree
With jagged holes where her breasts should be,
Rotting there in the rain.

On we pressed to the battle fray,
Dogged and dour and spent.
Sudden I heard my Captain say:
"Voilà! Kultur has passed this way,
And left us a monument."

So I looked and I saw our Colonel there,
And his grand head, snowed with the years,
Unto the beat of the rain was bare;
And, oh, there was grief in his frozen stare,
And his cheeks were stung with tears!

Then at last he turned from the woeful tree,
And his face like stone was set;
"Go, march the Regiment past," said he,
"That every father and son may see,
And none may ever forget."

Oh, the crimson strands of her hair downpoured
Over her breasts of woe;
And our grim old Colonel leaned on his sword,
And the men filed past with their rifles lowered,
Solemn and sad and slow.

But I'll never forget till the day I die,
As I stood in the driving rain,
And the jaded columns of men slouched by,
How amazement leapt into every eye,
Then fury and grief and pain.

And some would like madmen stand aghast,
With their hands upclenched to the sky;
And some would cross themselves as they passed,
And some would curse in a scalding blast,
And some like children cry.

Yea, some would be sobbing, and some would pray,
And some hurl hateful names;
But the best had never a word to say;
They turned their twitching faces away,
And their eyes were like hot flames.

They passed; then down on his bended knee
The Colonel dropped to the Dead:
"Poor martyred daughter of France!" said he,
"O dearly, dearly avenged you'll be
Or ever a day be sped!"

Now they hold that we are the best of the best,
And each of our men may wear,
Like a gash of crimson across his chest,
As one fierce-proved in the battle-test,
The blood-red Fourragere.

For each as he leaps to the top can see,
Like an etching of blood on his brain,
A wife or a mother lashed to a tree,
With two black holes where her breasts should be,
Left to rot in the rain.

So we fight like fiends, and of us they say
That we neither yield nor spare.
Oh, we have the bitterest debt to pay. . . .
Have we paid it? -- Look -- how we wear to-day
Like a trophy, gallant and proud and gay,
Our blood-red Fourragere."

 Robert Service, Ballads of a Bohemian, Book IV