BRITISH GAINS IN MARNE BATTLE.
THE GERMAN RETREAT.
From G. H. Perris With The French Armies. Monday (8 A.m.). The characteristic of a sound strategical conception, always supposing that it is well executed and fortunate in the circumstances, is to give results beyond the proportion due to the forces immediately engaged. Now that General Foch’s genius is having fuller play, with results that have in less than a week transformed the military outlook, my mind goes back to very different days, when, in the immobility of the trenches, such successes seemed to have become almost impossible.
Our victories spread and spread. On Thursday Foch loosed Mangin and Degoutte on Von Boehn’s west flank. On Friday night the German commander withdrew from the south bank of the Marne, thus closing the programme of the enemy offensive begun on Monday last. On Saturday he abandoned Château Thierry, the key to this part of the Marne. Yesterday, threatened all along his main line of communications to the Aisne, and driven by forces which crossed the Marne from Fossoy to Gland, from Mezy to Charteves, and between these points, Von Boehn hurriedly abandoned the large angle of which Câateau Thierry and the hills around the town were the south-western buttress.
One must know the country to understand well this precipitate retreat. The eastern part of the German salient between the Aisne and the Marne lies across a very hilly country, which is naturally defensible, and in which up the Vesle and Ardre valleys many good roads were built by the French in preparation for their Aisne offensive last year. It is quite otherwise with the western and larger part. There is only one great high road – that direct from Soissons to Château Thierry by Oulchy-le-château, with a branch that leaves it near Oulchy and passes by Fère-en-tardenois to the Marne at Jaulgonne. The only north-south railway is now under French fire, and the only other runs north-east from near Oulchy to Bazoches, in the Vesle valley, branching back thence to Soissons. The region is thinly populated and purely agricultural – an obscure countryside, whose few rough tracks wind by sleepy hamlets and lonely farms over the open beet-fields and moors and small twisting dales.
ENEMY’S GRAVE ERROR
But the transport of an army should be its first care. I said the other day, before our blow fell, that Ludendorff ’s plan was open to contemptuous criticism. Of course, the individual commanders will be victimised – Von Boehn will probably suffer as Von Kluck had to do in 1914. His orders to push beyond the Marne, however, must have come from Berlin and, if right were done, it is the Crown Prince, his superior, who would be cashiered, for they show a reckless indifference to an attack from the west which must have been serious, even if it had been less powerful than that of the Mangin and Degoutte armies. The Soissons-château Thierry highway was absolutely essential to the maintenance of Von Boehn’s army. Even a short Allied advance from the Retz Savières and Clignon valleys, such as would have brought it under fire, would have gravely compromised the German supplies of all kinds.
The German front was held at least by six divisions, with a seventh which was in course of relief. Of these, several had undergone severe losses in the Compiègne offensive month before, and had been told they were going to rest in a quiet sector. Others, including the Sixth Division of “my faithful Brandenburgers,” whom the Kaiser lauded in a famous despatch for having taken Fort Douaumont in February, 1916, were of better quality. How are the mighty fallen! There were Bavarians and Saxons, also, who do not exactly love one another – at least, the Bavarians charge the Saxons with weakness, almost amounting to treason. The fact is that all of them, Brandenburg braves included, met men superior in numbers, in spirit, and in war skill.
By eleven o’clock on Friday morning we had the Soissons-château Thierry road under our gunfire, and a little later the Fere-bazoches railway. On Saturday, with the Franco-american divisions at Ploisy and Parcy-tigny, hardly two miles from the road on the north, and at Etrepilly, the same distance on the south, while the French entered Château Thierry and crossed the Marne farther east, the situation had become exceedingly critical. It was met by an accentuation of the retreat on the south and a stiffening of resistance at what the enemy evidently regards as the vital points on the west flank, namely, the line of the small river Crise, immediately south of Soissons and the sector of the twin towns of Oulchy. At both these points the battle raged furiously yesterday. Nevertheless, the French and Allied troops crossed the high road between Villemontoire and Buzancy, and approached it south of the Ourcq, near Rocourt St. Martin. From here the front ran across the road by Epieds to the Marne, near Jaulgonne.
OUR MEN IN FIERCE STRUGGLE
Certain British divisions, strapping fellows from the Black Watch and other English and Scottish contingents, have had yesterday and to-day a modest but useful part in the battle of the eastern flank. They had only just come up across the Maine to the line midway between Reuil and Rheims, had, indeed, scarcely got out of their motor-wagons. With a French force and some Italian elements at their sides, the British regiments advanced yesterday, on a front extending from the Rheims high road near Bouilly to the Ardre valley, near Marfaux. Fortune was not very kind to them, for it happened that opposite our sector a relief was about to take place, so that we were faced by two German divisions instead of one, and of these the 50th Division was reputedly of good quality. Throughout yesterday and today the fighting has been most obstinate. Yesterday we took St. Euphraise village, at the extreme right of our line, and part of Rheims Wood at our centre, but lost part of Marfaux village on our left. To-day a new assault gave us the village of Bouilly and the remainder of the wood, which was a regular nest of machine-guns, and from these points of the hillside we came down into the Ardre Valley and captured Chaumuzy.