September 2:
Just before midnight on the 1st a German officer driving from von Kluck's headquarters to his division heads takes a wrong turn and is killed by a French patrol. His despatch case is taken to Colonel Marie Bertrand Alfred Fagalde of French Intelligence. Fagalde discovers a map showing the exact location of von Kluck's forces as well as the German general's exact plans for the following day. Von Kluck's plan is not to move south toward Paris, but south-east to attack the weak point where British and French armies meet.
On the 2nd the BEF reach the Marne River. "The troops have quite recovered their spirits and are getting fitter every day, and all they want is the order to go forward and attack the enemy - but that is not possible with the present rearward move of the French Army."
-General Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien, diary
A German cavalry patrol captures The Times correspondent Arthur Moore. He will be released in just a few days.
At the same time as thousands of Belgian refugees are approaching Paris from the north, one-third of the city's population - almost a million people - are fleeing to the south, along with the French government.
In the village of Senlis, Mayor Eugene Odent and six other citizens are taken to a field and executed.
"It is the stern necessity of war that the punishment for hostile acts falls not only on the guilty, but on the innocent as well."
-Field Marshall Baron Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, German Governor in Brussels
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“Never do anything you can't take back.”
—Rocky Russo
Last edited by Sailor Steve; 09-03-14 at 09:20 AM.
Reason: A simple misspelling.
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