Invalides, where the official _communiques_ are now given out to
the French and foreign press, I met a sergeant of an infantry regiment
who had been wounded during the fighting between Coulommier and
Ferte-Gaucher. "At daybreak on Sunday," he said, "we were sent forward
to prevent the German infantry from making their favorite turning
movement on our left wing. Our orders were to hold on to the enemy and
prevent his advance until the allied troops near Meaux had repulsed the
German attack being made in their direction. Early in the afternoon, the
Germans retired from Meaux before the allied divisions. We advanced and
drove them north of Ferte-Gaucher. The fighting lasted all night and
became very severe on Monday morning, but shortly afterwards the Germans
offered but slight resistance. For thirty kilometers we followed up two
German infantry regiments, supported by their cavalry and a section of
artillery. During their retreat, the Germans did not fire a single shot.
We soon succeeded in cutting off a detachment of infantry and in
capturing seven field guns and two machine guns. One of the prisoners,
an infantry sergeant, admitted that his men were short of ammunition,
and that their orders were to use as little of it as possible. It was
during the last combat that I was wounded in the thigh by a Prussian
officer, who cut me with his sword as I was trying to disarm him."

A wounded French infantry lieutenant says that the German troops seem
"fatigued and fagged out." Another officer says that in the trenches
near Coulommier, a dozen German infantry soldiers were found dead,
having been killed by French .75 millimeter shells, and were in the same
attitudes of firing that they had taken at the moment when they had been
"crisped" by death. An Algerian Turco was found dead, grasping his
rifle, the bayonet of which had pierced and killed a German soldier.
Both were corpses, but stood in grim death like a group of statuary.