Part 6

The outposts received them with a volley of rifle shots and then came on with grenades. The engine driver stopped the train, jumped down, and took refuge in a ditch. While the fight waxed hotter he was induced to return, and they managed to steam backward just in time, carrying some wounded and three German prisoners with them. The Lieutenant's satisfaction in this last item seemed, however, to be marred by the impression that the Germans were not forcibly captured, but wished to surrender.

The civilian refugees are going south in processions of farm carts, high-ended wagons, and ancient traps, or footing it behind barrows and perambulators. I would not speak lightly of the temporary loss of their lands and homes, but in their ranks there was no sign of panic or fear for the final result.

Most of them were women and children, with a few gaffers, heading a family group or driving cows and big white oxen. Girls with umbrellas up against the hot sun and dust clouds, little children in their Sunday best, and old ladies in Scotch caps sat on piles of straw, amid bedding and furniture, on high wagons. Many of the younger folks had bicycles and many walked, with dogs and goats frisking about them.

EXTENSION OF THE BATTLE

_On May 31 Mr. Perris described the extension of the battlefront during the preceding twenty-four hours. He wrote:_

The battlefront now forms a vast triangle, the apex pointing markedly toward Château-Thierry and less markedly toward Dormans. The west side runs for about fifty miles from the Oise opposite Noyon to the Marne. The east side runs back thirty miles to Rheims.

The enemy goes on multiplying his objective and distending his lines. The military worth of this strategy is perhaps in inverse ratio to its shown appearance on the map.

On the opposite flanks of the battlefield the allied forces have here been drawn slightly back from the acute salient, marked by the two trivial points named in a previous message, Betheny and Laneuvillette. The ruins of Rheims thus become the corner of the allied defenses on this line. I have explained that the city lies exposed in a saucer at the southwestern corner of the Champagne and is completely dominated by the allied crescent of high positions on the mountains of Rheims.

FIRM ON THE FLANKS

In contrast with the further advance of the German centre, the French and British forces on the wings are holding firm. The great highroad from Soissons to Château-Thierry marks broadly the western limit of the offensive.

On the northern stretch of it there was hard fighting yesterday. In the morning the enemy crossed the road at Hartennes and attacked westward with a number of tanks, but was checked near the hamlet of Tigny.

Further north a well-known French division made, with its traditional spirit, a thrust westward across the road and the little River Crise and reached the village of Noyant. It had to fall back, but here, too, the German advance was arrested. The Compiègne road is firmly held, and the disparity of forces is being rapidly reduced.

On the other flank of the battlefield the French and British divisions stand across the hills on the other bank of the Ardre, a small tributary of the Vesle, from Brouillet to Thillois, on the northern foothills of the mountain of Rheims, whence the front runs around the ruined city.

This French division struck out from Le Neuvillette along the canal and captured two hummocks, called Castalliers and De Courcy. It was a bold effort, intended to check the enemy rather than in the hope of retaining the position. This indeed proved impossible, but the French were slow to retire, and the lesson will not be lost upon their adversaries.

FIGHT TO THE DEATH

The news is gradually coming in of what happened on the front, submerged by the assault of Monday morning, (May 27.) Its most northerly part was the low ground beside the Ailette called the Forest of Pinon, which I described fully last Christmas, when I spent several days with the outposts by which it was held, in conditions somewhat reminiscent of Wild West warfare. The nearest trenches were on the hills a mile or two behind, this ground being too marshy to dig in. In the forest blockhouses were then being built, and were laid out while each side raided the other across the frontier on the stream and canal. Nothing then seemed less likely than an attack across such ground, but preparations were being pushed forward with the idea that a few groups of defenders would gather in and around the blockhouses and fight a delaying action, and then, if possible, escape back to the hill trenches.

The event turned out otherwise. When the surviving groups and outposts, amounting in all to three battalions, got together on Monday morning they decided to intrench themselves and to fight to the death. Carrier pigeons brought notes from them to this effect. The last note received was dated 2 P. M. on Tuesday. The best that can be hoped is that some survive as prisoners.

I think it may be said that there is now no danger of a break through toward any vital objective.

STRONGER RESISTANCE

_Mr. Perris on June 2 gave the first hint of improved aspects of the battle in the following dispatch:_

On Friday afternoon, May 31, General von Boehm's troops opened a new pocket beyond Oulchy of a depth of about five miles and on either side of the Ourcq Valley yesterday. In the course of stubborn fighting this salient was slightly extended, and at the same time a narrow bend was added to their gains between the Oise about Pont Eveque and the Aisne west of Soissons.

The main line of pressure was thus changed from south to southwest, and while the rest of the new front is relatively quiet, there have developed two bulges, which represent the acutest stress of the battle.

The first of these is between the Oise and the Aisne, directed toward the angle of the two rivers at Compiègne; the second, midway between the Aisne and the Marne, points westward along the Ourcq, toward the ancient town of Laferte-Milon.

In both these fields there has been a series of violent struggles this morning, with a notable increase of the power of resistance of the Allies. North of the Aisne the German assaults have been nearly everywhere broken. A slight advance by the Germans on the Ourcq has been won at the cost of very heavy losses, and the French are standing with splendid resolution along its small tributary, the Savieres, which marks the border of the forest region of Villers-Cotterets.

As the enemy has reached the heights northwest of Château-Thierry, where we watch them from the south side of the river, an attempt to push westward along the north bank of the Marne is to be expected.

THE ADVANCE CHECKED

_On June 3 Mr Perris was more optimistic than at any time since the battle began. He wrote as follows:_

There is a slackening in the violence of the battle. Yesterday's fighting was the most equal I have seen in this stage of the offensive. We lost Faverolles again--this village has since been recaptured--but regained Hill 163, just west of the village of Passy, and broke attacks against Corcy, Troesnes, and Torcy. It is to be expected that the enemy will make new efforts to destroy the French bastion on the bare plateaus between the Aisne and the Ourcq.

Local currents of fortune are also in the nature of things, according as one side or the other decides to throw its local reserves upon this or that point. So far as the intentions of the German command have been revealed, however, it may now be said that the position is in hand at the end of the first week of this third act of the German offensive.

What is the outlook? By lengthy preparation aimed at an unlikely sector the enemy gained ground to nearly as large an extent as in the first act. In the last week of March von Hutier pierced from St. Quentin to Montdidier, say, thirty-five miles. In the last week von Boehm advanced from the Ailette to Château-Thierry, about thirty miles, on a similar length of front. It is too early to attempt comparison of the cost of the two enterprises in losses and exhaustion.

The German staff seems to have counted on employing forty-five divisions in the Aisne offensive. Before the end of last week this figure had been exceeded. No essential objective has been attained, and none has been approached as nearly as in the two northern phases of the offensive. Concentration, not dispersal, of effort is the means to a quick decision. If Germany were not pressed for time and could be content with partial victories, she might be satisfied, but Germany is decidedly pressed for time, and only decisive actions now count.

The Americans are coming into the battlefront, and will presently be there in force. This front now extends over 200 miles. The superiority of aggressive force given by the collapse of Russia and Rumania is ebbing away.

FRENCH OUTNUMBERED

The question will have arisen in some minds why, if the defenses of the Chemin des Dames were as strong as I had represented them to be, last Monday's attack should have so quickly overcome them. Detailed narratives are being accumulated which throw light on this subject. I take the case of the division holding the French left a week ago. We all remember its front, which was naturally and artificially of the strongest. It had nearly twelve hours' notice of what was afoot.

In the first place, the German artillery preparation, though short, was of infernal violence. The rolling barrage was two miles deep. It destroyed the French telephone wires and filled the battery emplacements and machine-gun posts with various kinds of poison gas. Dust and artificial smoke clouds isolated groups of defenders and hid the waves of assault till they broke with a four-fold superiority of force. Many groups were thus surrounded, but fought on for a couple of hours, causing the enemy heavy losses. Many short counterattacks delayed advances and every line of trench wire was used.

But the next most important thing, since reinforcements could not arrive immediately, was that the mass of the division should be held together and drawn back gradually for the defense of more essential positions. These lay beyond the Soissons bridgehead. Reinforced last Tuesday night, the division defended the plateau southeast of Soissons for four days with obstinate heroism.

AIR SUPREMACY OF ALLIES

It may now be said that the allied airmen have established decided supremacy in the new battlefield. The Germans had a week ago, in this as in other respects, the advantage of their preparations and initiative, and they used it boldly, flying low in numbers, and machine-gunning our retreating ranks.

The balance could not be instantly redressed. The airplane seems to be the very type of mobility, but it devours petrol, demands repairs, and, in brief, must carry its camp with it.

Every day of this critical week has seen a larger concentration between the Oise and the Marne, and an increasing number of combats and expeditions. The first essential was to have constant information of the enemy's movements; and this scouting work, though less sensational than some other parts of the air program, remains perhaps the most important of all.

Then followed with growing vigor the development of the aggressive functions of the air service in which it became a sort of extension of artillery and cavalry and even of infantry. A single group in one day brought down six boche planes and three sausages, dropped seventeen tons of bombs in the region of Rheims, and tons on marching columns of the enemy in the neighborhood of Ville-en-Tardenois.

"Our pilots," said a group commander, "had orders not to come back with a single cartridge or bomb, and you may take it from me that they do not waste their munitions on clouds."

On Thursday another group commander, receiving news that an enemy column was stretched over three miles of a certain road, sent about fifty machines to deal with it. They charged as a squadron of cavalry would do, coming down to within twenty and even ten yards of the earth, and with bombs and machine guns effectually dispersing and demoralizing the graycoats.

Many enemy planes and sausage balloons have been brought down, but that is in the circumstances a secondary effort. Lines of communication and rear camps and centres of the enemy also have been harried. On Friday no less than seventy tons and on Saturday sixty-two tons of explosives were dropped by airmen on German bivouac troops.

IN THE MARNE VALLEY

I went down to the Marne Valley yesterday afternoon and from the edge of a wooded hill looked across over part of the north bank where the Germans are established. Established is hardly the word, for everything is floating and provisional in this phase of the war, and it is more than ever invisible except where infantry actions are in course, because there are no fixed intrenched lines. I could not find any trace of the enemy on the opposite amphitheatre of hills, but an observer hanging above at the tail of a sausage balloon may have seen something, for from time to time the French guns blazed angrily over my head and buildings were on fire in the villages.

In this winding stretch of the valley crests rise 500 feet above the broad, strong stream, and there are five or six miles between the two ridges. The French have guns and machine guns in position, and any considerable attempt to cross will be very costly.

Two hundred Germans came over yesterday morning and are now more or less contented guests of the French Republic. But the enemy does not seem to contemplate an immediate passage, if at all. It would probably be tried further west at some point where the northern hills are more dominant. The section of the important objectives appears to lie in this direction.

Immediately behind the zone of mutual observation, all the humming activities of arms are proceeding with a freedom unknown in the days of trench warfare, partly because this is the nature of the war of movement and partly because, like other services, the air squadrons are dispersed and the German airmen cannot obtain more than local and momentary equality. And amid all the flow of troops and guns, the pitching of camps, the laying of field telegraphs, shifting of hospitals and hangars, bringing up of munitions and supplies, there is an air of calm over the whole scene that would astonish those who see the offensive only as it is concentrated in a newspaper sheet.

FIERCE FIGHTING JUNE 3

_In his dispatch dated June 4 Mr. Perris described the fighting on the 3d, which was the last desperate attempt of the Germans to advance in that phase. He wrote:_

The battle blazed out afresh last night along and south of the upper Ourcq, and the struggle is raging with violence, due, in part, to the fact that both sides have brought up many guns and in part to the desperation of the Germans as once more they see victory slipping out of their hands.

Tactically, the chief feature today is the attempt of the enemy to support the attack on the Ourcq by a thrust further south along its tributary, the Clignon, a small stream following a marshy valley westward to the middle course of the Ourcq. There the most bitter combats have taken place and continue about the villages of Bouresches, Torcy, and Veuilly-la-Poterie. At the latter point the Germans tried to get around to the southward, but were effectually stopped in the Veuilly Wood, a mile south of the village, by Americans. In all this fighting the enemy's losses have been very severe, for in every case we had the best defensive positions, well supported by machine guns and 75s.

I spoke yesterday of the importance of the French stand to the southwest of Soissons, both as limiting the enemy's access to the Aisne Valley and as narrowing his approach to the Ourcq Valley. A slight withdrawal to the line of the villages of Pernant, Saconin, Missy, and Vaucastille yesterday did not materially weaken this buttress of the front. Nor is it seriously weakened by another short withdrawal this morning between Pernant and Missy, for which the enemy has had to pay dearly. We still hold Tresnes and Faverolles, and the prospects of von Boehm reaching Villers-Cotterets are not bright enough to cheer the drooping spirits of Berlin.

AMERICANS AT WORK

Another small warning of the rising power of American arms was given on the Marne yesterday morning, when a fresh band of machine gunners helped a French regiment to break an attempt to cross the river.

Between the Oise and the Aisne homeric conflicts are reported from the neighborhood of Carlepont Wood, in which the hill called Mont de Choisy, after having been lost and recaptured five times, remains in French hands.

In all fields, therefore, the equalization of forces produces a result more and more favorable. The defense of Mont de Choisy is the work of French colonials. These troops had already distinguished themselves, particularly at Douaumont, before Verdun.

Though the pressure upon the Franco-British line from Verneuil, on the Marne, to Rheims, has been much less severe than that on the western flank of the offensive, it is to be noted that the enemy has some of his best divisions in the former area.

French cavalry corps, generally dismounted, but sometimes playing their old part, have rendered excellent service during the battle. One of them after forming an essential element in the retreating line, had to meet Saturday and Sunday repeated attacks conducted by four--perhaps five--German divisions in the Malmaison and Trotte Woods, which crown the hills northeast of Verneuil, forming the buttress of the allied positions beyond the Marne. In the Ourcq Valley toward La Fierté-Milon another body of dismounted cavalry had to stand against some of the best Prussian troops, including the first division of the Guards.

ENEMY'S LONG PAUSE

_In his dispatch dated June 5 Mr. Perris noted that a marked pause had fallen on the battlefield. His comment was this:_

The pause in the enemy's adventure is a sign of weakness on his part and of advantage to us. Germany is fighting against time. The superiority she gained from the east is passing. The power of surprise has been her greatest asset. After that everything depends for her on speed in the exploitation of her success, and every delay is loss.

The next thing to remark is the great skill with which General Foch has pursued what may be called his provisional Fabian strategy. With surprise and superior reserves in the hands of the enemy, he had to face a situation of extreme difficulty. To weaken other parts of the front prematurely in order to defend the Aisne would have invited a fresh blow in those other parts.

Two needs rose supreme--that of economizing men so as to hasten the day when the Allies should have the superiority of forces necessary to victory, and that of barring the road of the enemy toward every vital objective. These objects have been attained, and if it should turn out that the third act of the offensive is finished, this will mean that, with all the unquestionable ability and daring of the German General Staff, Foch has beaten them for the third time in the two and a half months of their maximum power.

In any case, nothing of first-class importance has been lost. The allied front has not been broken. The roads to Paris, toward which the offensive was turned on the third day, are blocked. The ruins of Rheims are nearly indefensible, but the road to Châlons is barred. The plateaus between the Oise and the Aisne and between the Aisne and the Ourcq stand like bastions of a vast fortress. Château-Thierry is lost, and the eastern railway and the high road are locally interrupted, but the Marne and the Paris road beside it are covered.

Finally, the enemy has engaged fifty divisions of his reserves in this battle, and many of them have suffered very heavily.

AT CHATEAU-THIERRY

The attempt of part of the German 36th Division to cross the Marne at Jaulgonne was frustrated brilliantly by the Americans and French. It appears that a few men succeeded in getting across the river Thursday night [May 30] at this point, eight miles east of Château-Thierry, where the Marne makes a loop by the north.

They took shelter in the cutting and tunnel of the Paris-Châlons railway, which runs along the south bank, and though they lost seriously and their pontoons were destroyed, they got reinforcements over to the strength of a battalion.

An attack to clear them out was, therefore, organized, and this took place Sunday night, [June 2.] By that time the Germans had put twenty-two light bridges across the stream, of which four had been smashed by the French artillery, and had established a bridgehead with six machine guns and a hundred men in the railway station on the south bank opposite Jaulgonne.

This post was frontally attacked by a section of dismounted cavalry who, however, were held up by machine-gun fire until American machine guns came into action. Two sections of French infantry simultaneously fell upon the bridgehead and the Germans broke before them.

The prisoners, of whom there are a hundred, declare that their officers abandoned them at the beginning of the attack. A few men escaped by swimming, and thirty or forty others gained the northern bank by the pontoon boats. The rest of the battalion was wiped out.

The German losses in the action at the bridge of Château-Thierry were severe. It is estimated that a thousand bodies lay by and near the bridge, and the American machine gunners fired tens of thousands of cartridges.

HOW THE BATTLE BEGAN

_In his dispatches on June 2 and June 5 Mr. Perris gave these further details of how the battle began:_

As further details which I have received of their part in the beginning of the battle clearly show, these divisions, the 50th, 8th, 21st, and 25th, were, it will be remembered, tired from bitter and repeated actions in the course of the northern offensive. They had been on the front only seventeen days when last Monday's attack was made, and therefore had hardly had time to become thoroughly acquainted with the sector. The main force of the enemy assault fell on the front of the 50th and 8th Divisions, against whom there were four German divisions in line and two more in immediate reserve. The odds against the British on this day were two and a half to one.

The 50th Division on the left was doing well on the Craonne Plateau, when in the course of the morning they suddenly found that the enemy was behind them. Owing to this surprise, the neighboring brigade of the 50th Division suffered badly.

By afternoon General Fritz von Below's men had got to the line of the river, and in the evening the British were back at Guyencourt. By Wednesday evening they held a large crescent around Fismes from Lopeigne on the west through Coulanges and Lagery back to the Vesle at Muizon. By this time the fighting strength of the British units was greatly reduced, but reinforcements were coming up and the worst of the crisis was over. The full story of the splendid episode can hardly yet be told, but some day it will shine among the greatest achievements of the war.

Some time must yet elapse ere we can know fully and exactly what occurred on the Chemin des Dames at and after 4 A. M. on May 27. Many of the combatants have died a martyr's death and been buried by alien hands where they fell. Many more will long languish in prisoners' camps; but the remnants of some regiments have now come down from the front to rest, and by piecing together the narratives of these weary men it is possible to make the first outline of the story that will one day be told in all its pitifulness and terror.