Just to the west of Vendresse the 5th infantry brigade advanced against the part of the ridge where is situated the village of Courteçon. Simultaneously the 4th Guards Brigade, with the 36th brigade of artillery, debouched from Bourg along the Aisne and Oise canal, with the object of seizing Ostel. They had to fight their way, opposed foot by foot, through dense woods. The 6th brigade pressed up farther along the canal to Braye-en-Laonnois. It is immediately to the north of that place that the plateau is at the narrowest. Evidently to obtain possession of that neck would be a great advantage. The enemy held on to Braye at all costs.
Further west, again, the British advanced from Vailly to Aizy along another of the approaches to the plateau. The object was to hem in the Germans holding the Chivres bluff and Condé. On the farther side of the bluff from Aizy the division of Sir Charles Fergusson held on to Chivres village in the face of a succession of determined onslaughts.
As the outcome of this day's fighting, which had been very severe, the 1st army corps had won close up to the ridge by Craonne, and held positions extending along the plateau across the canal to Soupir, a distance of nearly nine miles. Concurrently the 2nd and 3rd corps had gained the plateau from Chavonne westward to Croucy, and with the exception of the Chivres bluff all the outer or southern edge of the plateau, as well as the intervening side valleys, were in the British hands, from Soissons to Craonne.
As soon as they had gained these positions the British troops set about digging themselves in, and although the rain fell all night in torrents, and the men had been through a long and fierce struggle since daybreak, they worked magnificently.
Next day (September 15) heavy rain blurred the view. Neither force could see the movements of the other, but when the mists lifted somewhat the Germans must have been surprised to discover that the foe were already in their stronghold.
On their side they had not been idle. They had brought along from Maubeuge the batteries of heavy howitzers used to destroy the forts at that place, and were putting them into well-concealed positions. Besides this they worked with energy to strengthen their entrenchments. These lines of trenches among and along the edges of the woods crowning the slopes of the ridge were elaborately made, and in general cleverly hidden.
They were so placed as to sweep with rifle and machine gun fire the approaches to the plateau up the various clefts. Lengths of barbed-wire entanglements and rabbit fencing further defended the approaches, both in the woods and across open ground. Where behind or between the lines of trenches the land rose—the top of the plateau had been worn by ages of weather into sweeping undulations—there were batteries of field guns, so arranged that they laid approaches under a cross fire. Round and in front of these knobs of land the trenches swept like ditches round bastions. Everything, in fact, that resource could suggest had been done to make the positions impregnable.[26]
In addition to trenches, hamlets and villages were held by the two armies as advanced posts, and had been turned roughly into groups of block houses.