Part 7

One of them is the French infantry regiment which had long held the central sector of this front. For this last trial it had been prepared by months of trench raiding and strengthening its defenses. Submerged by a storm of fire and poison gas and by wave upon wave of assault, it went down in a single morning, fighting the hopeless fight to the bitter end. A small number lived to cross the Aisne in the afternoon, and these had to continue the struggle for four days and nights, practically without respite. Few are those, even in this war, who have survived such agony.

They were warned, and, so far as their local means allowed, were prepared for the attack. Gas masks, machine guns, grenade stores--everything was ready. The order was to hold ground between the second and third positions or to die in the effort, and it was carried out. It was to be expected that the telephone wires would be cut. There remained carrier pigeons. A rolling barrage two miles deep and of indescribable violence extinguished the poor efforts of the local batteries to reply. Thick clouds of artificial smoke, gas, and dust shrouded the assault, so that rocket signals were not seen at the rear and the enemy was invisible till he reached the parapets.

The line was almost immediately broken and the battle became a struggle of isolated groups, heavily outnumbered without the possibility of reinforcement, defending scraps of broken trench dugouts or quarries and still resisting long after the main tide of the conflict had passed south.

A copy lies before me of messages dated from 3:30 to 8:30 A. M. and sent back from these isolated groups by pigeon. No words could be so eloquent as their laconic brevity. When permission to retreat was given some officers refused to avail themselves of it.

The Colonel, with his staff papers, crossed the Aisne at 10 A. M. and organized the defense of the passage. The survivors of the regiment were re-formed on the south bank, and on the following day received a reinforcement of men, bringing it up to a quarter of its original strength. This handful had to meet the heavy attack southwest of Soissons on May 29, and a series of attacks on the following two days. No more was humanly possible, and they were withdrawn. They say that not a man had uttered a complaint.

BATTLE OF THE OISE

_A fourth phase of the German offensive opened June 9 on a front of 20 miles between Noyon and Montdidier, which Mr. Perris describes thus:_

A new phase of the German offensive opened this morning at 4:30 o'clock on a front of about twenty miles, extending from Montdidier to Noyon. The artillery preparation, which again was rich in gas shells, began at midnight, and covered not only the front, but a deep zone behind it, especially villages and roads where the enemy thought to catch the French local reserves.

There were evident reasons for the choice of this sector, and in particular for seeking control of part of it, for a successful push south along the line of the Roye-Compiègne railway would add another converging road to the four roads leading toward Paris by the Oise, Aisne, Ourcq, and Marne Valleys, which had already been tried. On the other hand, the enemy could not reasonably hope for any such surprise as was obtained in the first act of the offensive before St. Quentin and in the third act of that on the Chemin des Dames.

In general, the French are resisting with dogged courage in their covering positions, which are beyond range of the enemy mine throwers. Evidence accumulates of the heaviness of the German losses in the recent fighting and of the disappearance of the shallow enthusiasm with which the offensive was begun.

_In describing the progress of this assault Mr. Ferris wrote on June 10:_

The front of the attack was twenty miles in length, as compared with a front of thirty miles in the attack on the Chemin des Dames and fifty miles in the first phase of the offensive on March 21, and so far it is only on the central half of this smaller front that any considerable impression has been made on the French lines.

Whatever may have been the exact design, there had not been this time the same extreme scruple to conceal troop movements, and for some days past the exceptional traffic of convoys, the suspicious activity of the enemy batteries in the correction of ranges and other signs had given warning of what was afoot.

HEAVIER GERMAN LOSSES

One consequence was that, when the German infantry advanced yesterday morning, it had to meet a volume of fire very different from that which had answered the surprises of St. Quentin and the Aisne Heights. French gunners had thoroughly studied the ground before them and were all ready to deluge every path of approach directly that graycoat waves appeared. From the beginning, therefore, the German losses have been heavier than on the earlier occasions, and this must affect the development of the action.

In other respects the now familiar von Hutier manoeuvre appears to have been repeated, shock battalions carrying light machine guns and machine rifles concentrating upon local breaches in our line and leaving the task of cleaning up islands of resistance to the support troops while they pressed on rapidly to exploit the first success. It will probably be found that the operation was begun with about fifteen divisions in the line, approximately 150,000 men, giving a density of one division to a mile and a third.

Faced with a force superior in all arms, long resistance of the first line is impossible, but it is significant that at 8 o'clock yesterday morning, that is after four hours of a terrible storm of gas and explosive shells, followed by four hours of hand-to-hand struggle, our allies were still in a large part of the field fighting within what is called the zone of advanced posts, and only the centre had fallen back on the zone of principal resistance. Plemont Hill, overlooking Lassigny, was still holding out at that hour, although the front had lain immediately beneath it. The villages of Le Fretoy and Courcelles were lost during the morning, but were recovered by counterattacks, in which the French troops showed the highest spirit.

Up to late last night the only result that von Hutier could regard as in any degree justifying the effort made and the losses suffered was the capture of the villages of Ressons-sur-Matz and Mareuil-la-Motte, whereas on the French left before Ribecourt, by Le Tretoy to Courcelles, and on the right from Belval to Cannectancourt, the advance varied from one to two miles. At the centre it rather exceeded three.

This is a poor gain, judged by precedent, and was bought at an exorbitant price, but it has a certain tactical and perhaps superior consequence.

_Later on June 10 Mr. Perris gave this further description of the progress of the fighting:_

"This is the real battle," said a French staff officer, meaning to contrast today's fierce fighting between forces unequal indeed, but not crushingly so, with the attack on the Chemin des Dames. Here the French had a stronger line, their reserves were nearer, and they had sufficient notice to bring their batteries at every point into effective action. Effective, do I say? At many points it was a massacre of the columns of assault, and there is unanimity as well among the prisoners as among our own combatants that the ranks of the enemy have been torn and plowed with shot and shell. Never, perhaps, has the German Army paid so dearly for an advance which nowhere exceeds five miles.

This is the essential fact which governs all that follows; for if, as the German official press says with a measure of truth, the German objective is not a city or a port, but the complete destruction of the allied armies, so our objective is not to hold a certain geographical area, but to punish the advance so that the enemy forces will be exhausted, while ours are being constantly recruited from oversea for the last stroke that will give us the victory.

The smallness of the enemy's gains in this fourth phase of the grand battle is merely the sign that von Hutier found across his path an adversary prepared as far as was humanly possible, determined and able to contest every yard of ground.

Thus the village of Courcelles, only two miles from the old front, was lost, retaken, lost again, recovered, and remains in the hands of the French. Thus Plemont, a position insignificant as compared with the Aisne Heights, although encircled and covered with fire, was being defended till last evening. Since then no carrier pigeon has come in, and it must be presumed that the heroic handful of men who held this point of the front have been overcome. Their countrymen will not forget them.

The Turning Point of the Battle

By WALTER DURANTY

[Copyrighted]

_The turning point of the great battle came on June 11, when the French delivered a desperate counterblow south of Montdidier and drove the Germans back from the Aronde River, regaining important ground along a front of seven and one-half miles, and capturing 1,000 prisoners and many heavy guns. This phase of the struggle is described by Walter Duranty, another special correspondent, whose dispatch is copyrighted for_ CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE. _It is dated June 11, 1918._

As the battle continues it seems that the second week of June will rank as one of the bloodiest and most decisive periods in the world's history.

It is the veritable climax of four years of struggle. In the last twenty-four hours the violence of the fighting has increased still further. The limit of human endurance has been forced yet another notch higher. Along a front of nearly twenty miles the Germans are driving more than a quarter of a million men forward through a sea of blood. The defenders say that it is as though the whole of the German Army is engaged against them; no sooner is one battalion annihilated than another takes its place, and another and another.

Early yesterday morning a handful of dismounted cavalry, greatly employed for liaison work, fought their way back to the French lines from the surrounded hill of Plemont. They reported that the survivors of the French battalion occupying the position were still holding out when they left, and that no less than fourteen attacks had already been repulsed.

CARPETED WITH DEAD

The grassy slopes of the hill bore a hideous carpet of thousands of German dead, over which new forces still advanced with the same madness of sacrifice as the Carthaginians of old, flinging their children, their possessions, and themselves into Moloch's furnace. The bloody religion of militarism that Germany has followed for forty years has led its votaries to culminating orgies of destruction.

But the defenders are not appalled by the fury of the struggle, nor by numbers. Each position is held until every foot of ground has been paid for by German blood. Again and again a swift counterattack, delivered at the right moment, has wrested from the assailant the fruits of the success he won so dearly and forced him to pay a toll of lives twice over. In the villages thus retaken, the poilus say, gray-clad corpses lay heaped up as though they had been collected for a gigantic funeral pyre, and more than once the advancing enemy was screened from the defenders' fire by a rampart of his own dead.

The general situation of the battle has changed little. In the centre the French have retired slightly. On the left also there is a southward bulge in the line. The right is still held by a wooded massif above Drelincourt. On the right the towers of Noyon Cathedral could just be distinguished. To the left smoke haze marked Lassigny, half hidden in a hollow. It was a natural fortress with an infinity of cover for guns, men, and machine guns against which no fury of sacrifice might prevail. Well may the Germans try to turn that grim salient by an advance further south in the centre--clearly their immediate objective. They held it once before last year's retreat and they know its strength.

As I returned from the observation post I passed through a great natural amphitheatre in a sort of mountain. At one side the Germans had carved a huge eagle, colored blood red, on a slab of rock above a grotto that had been their headquarters. Beneath it in Gothic letters was the Brandenburg motto, "On, Brandenburg, on!" The artist who designed the bird that is the symbol of German violence was well inspired. The Kaiser's eagles are red, indeed, clotted and stained from beak to claw with the crimson of countless slaughters.

The latest information from the battlefront emphasizes still more clearly the difference between the results of the new German method of attack when applied on a weakly held sector and a front where the allied strength is normal. On two previous occasions Hindenburg's storm divisions gained sensational success right from the outset by literally swamping small forces by sheer weight after the defenders had been half-stunned by the terrific bombardment to which their inferiority of artillery permitted no adequate response.

Conditions are very different today. In the first place there was no strategic surprise--the German move in this sector had been foreseen. The utmost vigilance was everywhere maintained, and unmistakable signs, such as the movement of troops, convoys, and artillery registration, had been carefully noted. Precautions to meet the shock had been taken. Against attack in depth by successive waves a depth defense had been planned, with a front line of thinly held outposts to minimize loss, and successive lines of greater strength extending back for kilometers.

When the German artillery storm broke out it was answered by a perfect hurricane of French fire. Not only was every possible point where the enemy troops might advance or batteries be hidden thoroughly registered, but artillery held in reserve had its guns trained on targets offered further in the rear by each hill, wood, or valley that the enemy might assail as a vantage point or medium for infiltration.

The consequence has been that, in direct contradiction to the former drives, the enemy's initial losses have been enormous and his gains small; and the French losses were greatly decreased. Above all, there has been no penetration of the line of resistance. In places it bulged slightly under pressure, but only at the price of the most dogged fighting and heavy sacrifice, and withal very slowly. One fact marks the difference sufficiently:

HOW THEY WERE CHECKED

On May 27 the Germans had reached the Aisne--seven kilometers from the starting point, across difficult country--in four and one-half hours after the attack. In the first thirty hours of the present attack they had barely passed thinly held outposts. Along the whole thirty-kilometer front, from the Oise to Assainvillers--somewhat shorter than the area of bombardment--fifteen to twenty assaulting divisions were met by a galling machine-gun barrage and the terrible "75" fire curtain from quick-firers and batteries. Irreplaceable storm troops, whose training had taken months and whose existence was essential to the continuance of Hindenburg's new strategy, melted like snow beneath the August sun.

At Plemont--the scene of one of the most gallant actions in the checking of the March drive by the men of the same army--the Germans met a stubborn resistance, though their dead lay there thick as fresh-cut wheat but a few hundred yards beyond the line of outposts. Even in the centre, where the enemy's progress was deepest, an unbroken line of defense was constituted by the same troops that had withstood the attack from the beginning. Their spirit and numbers were still sufficient, though the Germans opposing them had sent forward fresh storm troops in wave after wave.

Mr. Perris's Description of the French Counterblow

_The French counterblow described above by Mr. Duranty was of great importance in changing the entire aspect of affairs for the Allies. Mr. Perris, in a dispatch dated June 12, gave these further particulars:_

Faces that wore a serious expression yesterday morning are decidedly cheerful today. The battle has, in fact, taken a better turn. It is a very dreadful struggle; no Frenchman can forget that fact, and in the fever of weighing and measuring results more distant observers should not for a moment overlook what they mean in flesh and blood. That being said, we may join in the satisfaction of our allies that on its third day the German onset has suffered a distinct check.

Following the front from west to east, the first thing to note is the series of French counterattacks on the left, carried to a considerable measure of success by skill in the direction and high spirit and fortitude in the ranks.

At 11 A. M. yesterday a movement began from a little east of the railway line between Domfront and Wacquemoulin. The infantry were supported by tanks, and along the whole line the Germans were swept back. A French contingent actually reached points which were within the German front. The French advance went well beyond Rubescourt and Le Fretoy, half way between Courcelles and Mortemer, and between Mery and Couvilly, beyond Belloy, and to the border of St. Maur.

Meanwhile the enemy had delivered a very powerful blow at the French centre and had driven a way, despite vigorous opposition, as far as the village of Antheuil, two miles south of the Matz. At 4 P. M. a further counterattack was therefore made from the French left centre, and the enemy advance was completely arrested. In these combats a certain amount of confusion was apparent in the German ranks, and the fact that 1,000 prisoners and some cannon were taken speaks eloquently. This was not the heaviest punishment. Eyewitnesses say that German corpses strew the battlefield in piles.

Three critical days of the offensive have then given the enemy at the cost of enormous losses a not very magnificent result. We now know that the program was to reach Compiègne on the second day. General von Hutier must be greatly disappointed.

The attack was begun with fourteen divisions, at full strength, in the line. They included at the centre divisions of the Prussian Guard and four other crack divisions. About twice as many divisions have now been thrown into this battle, ten already holding the sector and the rest being fresh reserves.

These figures may be measured by the fact that the total German forces in the west amount to 207 divisions, and that of these before the offensive only sixty-two were in the general reserve, the rest being engaged on the front. The more we consider in the light of material considerations like these what the German command essayed and what it has accomplished the more we shall appreciate the valor of the French armies and the qualities of their chiefs; and it is impossible to do justice to either without such reflection.

FRENCH HOLD GAINS

_On June 12 Mr. Perris reported that the French were holding their gains and gave these further details of the counterattack the day before:_

The French lines hold all the way round from the important position of Mery Plateau by the hamlets of St. Maur and Antheuil to Marest and Chevincourt. Time after time, last night and this morning, the gray-coated masses of General von Hutier came on, only to be mowed down by waves of fire from the 75s and machine guns, and their remnants dispersed with bayonet and grenade.

Yesterday's French counterattacks met great bodies of the enemy prepared to force another advance. Four divisions were found to be ranged in a space of two miles. Hence the frightful intensity of the combat and the abnormal slaughter.

The French tanks did very good service, and fleets of airplanes, British as well as French, swept down upon the battlefield before and behind our infantry, dropping bombs and raining down volleys of bullets wherever a group of enemy soldiers was seen. The numerical inferiority of the French was thus made good.

The block of wooded hills was very difficult to defend, even if the enemy had got no further than Mareuil. The woods prevented long views and open fields of fire; the deep ravines invited infiltrations; the Oise Valley at the back left supply and relief columns open to the German guns, and the Matz Valley, on the west, was the plain path of envelopment. These are the reasons why this corner was not held longer.

Among the wheat and beet fields of the gently rolling plateau further west, on the other hand, the defense had more advantage. There are folds of ground enough to hide its batteries and reserves, but in every direction there are open lines of fire, room for manoeuvre and numerous railroads. Striking northeast from the Estrées Railway, the French threaten the German centre.

To continue the southward march, even if it were possible, before this pressure on the west had been disposed of would be reckless. Hutier has met his match.

THE COMPIEGNE THRUST

_On June 13 General von Hutier made a threatening thrust toward Compiègne, which was parried by the French and was practically the termination of further serious efforts in this phase by the Germans. Mr. Perris tells the story of it as follows:_

South of the Aisne the high, bare farmlands extending from Soissons to the borders of the forest of Compiègne are cut by a valley running up from the other great forest of Villers-Cotterets to the river at Ambleny. This valley, with the villages of Laversine, Coeuvre, Cutry, Dommiers, and St. Pierre-Aigle, has constituted the front for the last fortnight, with French outposts on the east side, but the real line of resistance on the west.

Von Hutier having met with trouble beyond his expectations on the west of the Oise, his colleague, von Boehm, was sent yesterday morning to create a diversion on this flank of the battlefield. Five divisions, two of them fresh ones, were thrown forward on both sides of Laversine, a front of four miles.

Though outnumbered, the French have given a fine account of themselves, breaking repeated assaults of the enemy, who is reported to have got into the villages of Coeuvre and St. Pierre, a feat more than counterbalanced by the French advance at Damard, further south on the border of Villers-Cotterets Forest, and the admirable action of the Americans on the ground recently taken by them in Clignon Valley.

This, however, is not the best sign for the fifth day of the offensive. Von Hutier's thrust from the north toward Compiègne was by far the most threatening of the numerous lines of attack the German command has now opened. It has been brought to a stop by reactions of the French left and centre, and was this morning contained, as we may hope definitely, from the Mery Plateau and along the course of the Matz.

ENEMY'S FEVERISH HASTE

The feverish haste with which the enemy's attacks are multiplied as the field of the offensive is enlarged, speaks eloquently of the conscious need to bring the grand adventure to a speedy climax. But this haste involves heavy moral as well as numerical usury. Instead of a full normal period for refilling and new equipment, including rest at the rear, or in a quiet sector, and a course of fresh training being given to a division withdrawn from the line owing to its losses, it is hurriedly reconstituted and pushed back into the battlefront after as few days as possible.