South of Rheims and away to the south and east from Epernay towards Bar-le-Duc, the war-struck ground ceases. Pleasant avenues and undamaged villages are delightful to the eye after days of wandering in the desert of the north-west. In places we even passed through avenues of fruit-trees in full blossom.
Having failed in the east, Ludendorff redoubled his pressure on the west of the Montagne, but British troops and Italian Alpini joined the French in holding up the critical points; and although the salient round Rheims itself was narrowed, the Marne was not reached and Epernay could only be shelled from a distance of seven or eight miles. Near Château Thierry, at the western end of the great salient, American troops aided the French in preventing advance. Already on the 18th of July, the first day of the advance, the French reached positions commanding the road and railway at Soissons, on the 21st Château Thierry was recaptured, and the next day saw the Germans back, for the last time, north of the river which had been the turning-point in 1914. The 26th of July saw an engagement which earned very special appreciation from Haig,[46] the taking of the Buzancy Château ([Plate 116]) and the little plateau on which it stands, about 300 feet above the River Crise, some four miles south of Soissons. Buzancy had been the object of an attack by the French and another by the Americans within a week from the commencement of the advance, but had been pertinaciously held by the Germans. It is in effect a narrow promontory between two deep valleys, and an almost unassailable position. On the 28th of July the 15th Scottish Division were told off for the attack, and the Highlanders succeeded after a fight so notable that, although the position was not permanently held until a day or two later, the 17th French Division erected a memorial ([Plate 117]) in commemoration of it on the spot where the body of the foremost Highlander was found. The monument, simple and dignified, bears the inscription: "Ici fleurira toujours le glorieux Chardon d'Écosse parmi les Roses de France." Five days later the French entered Soissons once more, and on the 5th of August the Aisne was again crossed, and Fismes ([Plate 95]), on the Vesle, was taken by the Americans on the same day. But Foch's plan led him to leave this district for a time while equally important advances were made elsewhere.
On the 10th of October the troops were back again on the old Le Cateau battlefield, and Le Cateau was retaken, and on the next day the whole length of the Chemin des Dames plateau was again in the Allies' possession.
On the 4th of November we were again at Landrecies,[47] and right through the Mormal Forest, while on the next day the ancient fortifications of Le Quesnoy ([Plate 118]) were taken by assault and the garrison surrendered.
Meantime French and Americans were advancing farther to the east, outside the lines of the 1914 retreat, through extremely difficult country, and meeting with strenuous opposition. Near Varennes one saw still in 1920 the American notice, "Road under control; split your convoy" (see p. [75]).
The Germans, retreating, naturally cut down all the trees on the roadsides in order to lay them across the roads to hinder our advance; there now remain only stumps a few feet above the ground. It must be long before the old avenues can reappear, but cultivation seemed to be going on normally everywhere. The destruction of fruit-trees in the German retreat of 1917 was a different matter, the justification of which on military grounds seems somewhat strained. [Plate 119] is copied from a photograph in a captured German Report from the Hirson district. It was intended specially to show the blowing up of a railway-bridge at Mennessis, but serves also to show exactly the thorough and deliberate way in which the orchards were destroyed.
At cross-roads mine craters formed a serious delay to traffic, and the sappers (after careful investigation for, and destruction of, the numerous booby-traps) had to bridge or to circumvent them, or both. Bridges, of course, were all blown up. Hirson, entered on the 8th of November ([Plate 120]), is an example of many others, where there has not been time to erect a girder bridge. [Plate 121] shows one of the pile bridges over the Condé Canal—bridges which were often erected in an incredibly short time. The Americans reached the Meuse at Sedan ([Plate 122]) on the 5th of November, and took the western half of the town on the 7th, and the British under Byng retook the ancient fortress of Maubeuge ([Plate 123] shows the girder bridge over the Meuse here put across after the German retreat), which had been compelled to surrender, after a fortnight's siege, on the 9th of November in 1914. Finally British troops (Canadians) reached Mons ([Plate 124]), and entered the city at dawn on the 11th of November, a few hours before the Armistice came into effect. So ended the campaign where it had been commenced more than four years earlier. A story told by Mr. Buchan[48] is well worth repeating: The 8th Division in Horne's First Army had spent the winter of 1917-18 in the Ypres Salient; it had done gloriously in March in the retreat from St. Quentin; it had fought in May in the third battle of the Aisne, and from the beginning of August had been hotly engaged in the British advance:
"Yet now it had the vigour of the first month of war. On the 10th of November one of its battalions, the 2nd Middlesex, travelled for seven hours in 'buses, and then marched twenty-seven miles pushing the enemy before them. They wanted to reach the spot near Mons where some of them (then in the 4th Middlesex) fired almost the first British shots in the war, and it is pleasant to record that they succeeded."
With the recollection of this exploit and the story of Cambrai and Bourlon (and many others) before them, will anyone in future be daring enough to try to convince us of the physical and moral decadence of the Cockney—a doctrine which some offensively superior people tried to preach not so many years ago?