Have you ever heard a mitrailleuse? It is just like a telegraph
instrument, with its insistant clickety click-click-click, only it is a
hundred times as loud. Indeed I have been told by French officers that
it has sometimes been used as a telegraph instrument, so accurately can
its operator reel out its hundred and sixty shots a minute.
On that morning at the Gerbeviller barricade, however, it went faster
than the telegraph. These men on the converging roads just shifted their
range slightly and poured bullets into the next ranks of infantry and so
on back along the line, until Germans were dropping by the dozen at the
sides of the little straight road. Then the column broke ranks wildly
and fled back into the shelter of the road from Luneville.
A half hour later a detachment of cavalry suddenly rounded the corner
and charged straight for the barricade. The seventy-five were ready for
them. Some of them got half way across the bridge and then tumbled into
the river. Not one got back around the corner of the road to Luneville.
There was another half hour of quiet, and then from the Luneville road a
battery of artillery got into action. Their range was bad, so far as any
achievement against the seventy-five was concerned, so they turned their
attention to the chateau, which they could easily see from their
position across the river.
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