The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-18

l Cars filled with wounded are coming from
 the battle line proceeding to Chauny The blood is dripping through the bottom, but
 no exclamation of pain, no lamentations. Round Soissons the battle ragged during
 the whole night from Thursday to Friday. The town Itself has been evacuated. It is
 a natural barricade between the two armies. At five at daybreak an officer asked us to leave the firing line, as in , half an hour the advance of the English would begin and the Germans would evaeuate soissons. The town-nothing friend or foe The inhabitants did not count. There Is nothing left for them Reuters Special"
 Talked With Many People
 While I continued to wait for the au- tomobile to return I talked with as many people as l could and noticed as many details as possible. The soldiers offered me number of souvenirs. One of them told me that he had picked up a German lance on the battlefield, that he had placed it in a niche in the wall on the out
 skirts of the town. Unfortunately, did not have time to go after it, for
 the car returned shortly from the gen.
 erals headquarters. The general had not been found at the chateau and could not be located. We were discussing the situation with the officer of gendarmes when an officer with silver leaves upon 1 his collar, whom I took to be a staff officer, came up. He seemed to be thor oughly cognzant of the facts and stated at the outset that the gentlemen who were being held had violated the rules of the military authorities and that they should not be allowed to go under any consideration before being courtmartialed. That settled it, and so all we could do was to assure the prisoners that we should call the attention of the author ities at Paris to their plight as soon as we reached the town, which we did. Take Letters Back to Paris The soldiers asked me to take a batch of letters back to Paris for them, and one of them requested me to pass by his brothers house and take the information that he was all right so far, which I did the next day. There was one thing that struck me as being unusual about these fellows. They. had been enduring the most rigid hardships, going often without sleep or food, and in many cases fatigued to exhaustion. They were never out of the sound of those cannon which had heen tearing up their ranks. One would have thought that their nerves would have been on edge. On the other hand tley were uniformly courteous and con siderate in everything they said or did.
 Start Back to Paris
 It was now between 2.30 and 8. and as we had about 60 miles to go over more or less tornup roads, we set out from Gourmelles as fast as we could for Paris. In the forest of Villers-Cotterets we were considerably embarrassed by trains of motor trucks carrying supplies. They would come tearing around corners at about the same rate of speed we were going without footing @ horn or giving any other signal that they were near. The only other matter of interest that noticed along here was an old peasant driving COW along the road. He was wearing an English service overcoat. Oyercoats must be easy for the country reople to get nowadays
 From Villers- Cotterets we took the wrong road and soon were lost. but keep ing straight ahead we got into one of the main roads leading to Paris near I point called Faveroles. Continuing south west we crossed the River Ourcq at La Ferte Milon and again passed Marbles lut this time on the far side of the river
 We saw the dynamited bridge that we had decided not to cross earlier during the day. The fighting on this side of the river had evidently been very intense, as the rifle pits were scattered with parts of uniforms. but the dead here had been removed, though the fields were full of dead horses. Some attempt had been made to destroy their bodies by Eindling fires over them, with only par tial success. as the odor in the atmos- phere could attest. The is one circum- stance about this country that makes it a more pleaing battlefield than our own: there are no buzzards here.
 Shells Abandoned by Germans
 At 4:40. q few miles to the northeast of Mareuil- l-sur- -Ourcq, we came upon a very wide, flat field which had been n German camp. From the quantity of space that had been occupied I should judge that a great many thousand men had been camped there. The place was scattered with tin cans, straw, bottles and other waste of the same nature The only materials of war that the Germans