Our Army at the Front

by Heywood Broun

This was the side on which British and Italian troops were co-operating with the French, and the German command got for its pains in that direction a counter-attack which narrowed the distance from battle-line to battle-line across the top of the salient. The French menaced Fère-en-Tardenois, the German base of supplies.

Allied aviators bombed these stores, the long-range guns pounded at them, and what with these and the conflagrations started defensively by the Germans the Marne salient was a caldron which turned the skies blood-red.

On July 24 the ground gained all along the line averaged two miles. The British southwest of Rheims made a damaging curve inward, and the shove around the other two sides was fairly even.

On July 25, one week from the beginning of the offensive, the Americans and French from the Soissons side and the British and French from the Rheims side had squeezed in the neck of the trap till it measured only twenty-one miles. The French arrived within three miles of Fère-en-Tardenois, and although the German resistance increased again, the evacuation of Fère and the removal of stores to Fismes, far up on the straight line, were foreshadowed.

The road leading between the two supply-bases was shelled incessantly, and the difficulties of resistance within the fast-narrowing salient became almost superhuman. But the rear-guard of the Germans "died to a man," to quote the observers, and the rear action held the Allied gains to a few miles daily.

A definite retreat began on the morning of July 27, with what the airmen reported as an obvious determination to make a stand on the Ourcq. The forest of Fère was taken, and many villages, but the fighting was insignificant because, in the language of the communiqués, "our forces lost contact with the enemy." Possibly this is what the famous phrase of the Ludendorf communiqué, "The enemy evaded us," had in mind.

There was a certain psychological stupidity in this German decision to make a stand on the Ourcq. It was on the Ourcq that Joffre and Foch made the fatal stroke of the first Marne battle, and the very name of the river inspired France.

While this retreat was in progress, the swiftest of the battle, the German communiqué read: "Between the Ourcq and the Marne, the enemy's resistance has broken down. Our troops, with those of our allies, are in pursuit."

On the 29th the Germans crossed the Ourcq, with the Americans behind them. The "pursuit" continued. The American troops, with French to the right and left of them, forced the enemy to within a mile of the Vesle, where his halt had no hope of being more than temporary. The brilliant charge across the Ourcq was done by New Yorkers—the "fighting 69th," which refuses to be known by its new name of "165th." Edwin L. James, writing of this charge for the New York Times, said: "There is doubt if any chapter of our fighting reached the thrills of our charge across the Ourcq yesterday. Americans of indomitable spirit met a veritable hell of machine-guns, shells, gas, and bombs in a strong position, and broke through with such violence that they made a salient jutting into the enemy line beyond what the schedule called for."

This American charge cured the Germans of any intention to stay on the Ourcq. The resistance, after that first attack, was sporadic and ineffectual. Village after village was reclaimed.