Chapter 13 - La Haye Sainte
La Haye Sainte had sat quietly beside the road when I first saw it.
A farmhouse.
Walls.
Buildings.
A place where people had once eaten meals, repaired tools, argued about weather.
By evening on June 18, it had become one of the most important pieces of ground in Europe.
The defenders had fought for hours.
Ammunition ran short.
French troops pressed harder.
Then word reached us:
La Haye Sainte had fallen.
The reaction was immediate.
Officers moved faster.
Artillery fire shifted.
French guns were brought closer to the Allied center.
Someone said:
“If they break through there, we’re done.”
Nobody corrected him.
The center was under enormous pressure.
French skirmishers pushed forward.
Cannons fired at closer range.
Casualties increased.
Mercer worked like a machine.
I stopped asking men where they came from.
There was no time.
Hold.
Water.
Bandage.
Move.
Next.
A young Dutch-Belgian soldier stared at me while Mercer treated him.
“Are we winning?”
I looked outside.
Smoke.
Running men.
Gunfire.
“I don’t know.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“If you said yes, I would know you were lying.”
He smiled faintly.
The smile disappeared when pain returned.
Near six in the evening, I truly believed we might lose.
The Allied line looked thin.
Men had been fighting for hours.
Units had suffered terribly.
La Haye Sainte was in French hands.
Hougoumont still fought.
French cavalry had not broken the squares, but neither had the army disappeared.
And the Prussians?
Everyone had been speaking about them since morning.
They were coming.
They were near.
They had been delayed.
They were lost.
They were already fighting.
No one knew.
Then, from the east, we heard artillery.
New artillery.
Mercer stopped for one second.
He looked toward the sound.
“So,” he said.
“What?”
May you like
“They found us.”
The Prussians had arrived.
