The system of making attacks by means of shock troops was producing the inevitable result. The shock regiments were composed of selected men, picked here and there, from the regular troops. Their selection had naturally weakened the regiments from which they were taken. After three months of great offensives these shock troops were now in great part destroyed, and the German lines were being held mainly by the inferior troops which had been left. Moreover, in other parts of the world, the allies of Germany were being beaten. In Italy and Albania and Macedonia there was danger.
The Germans prepared for one more effort. On June 18th they had made a costly attempt to carry Rheims. On July 15th they made their last drive. Ludendorf took almost a month for preparation. He gathered together seventy divisions and great masses of munitions, and then drove in from Chateau-Thierry on a sixty-mile line up on the Marne, and then east to the Argonne forests. His line made a sort of semicircle around Rheims and then pushed south to the east and west of that fortress.
Once again he had temporary success. West of Rheims he penetrated a distance of five miles, and on the first day, had crossed the Marne at Dormans, but was held sharply by the Americans east of Chateau-Thierry. On the second day he made further gains, but with appalling losses. On the 17th he was still struggling on with minor successes but on July 18th the French and Americans launched the great counter-offensive from Chateau-Thierry along a twenty-five mile front, between the Marne and the Aisne. The Germans everywhere began their retreat and the war tide had turned.
The German attack east of Rheims had been a failure from the start. The Allied forces retired about two miles and then held firm. The country there is flat and sandy and gave little shelter to the attacking forces which lost terribly. In this sector, too, there were many American troops, who behaved with distinguished bravery.
By this time nearly seven hundred thousand men of the American army were on the battle line. They had been fighting here and there among the French and English but on June 22d General March made the announcement that five divisions of these troops had been transferred to the direct command of General Pershing as a nucleus for an American army.
In glancing back at the great German drives which have now been described, one is impressed by the terrific character of the fighting. This struggle undoubtedly was the greatest exertion of military power in the history of the world. Never before had such masses of munitions been used; never before had scientific knowledge been so drawn on in the service of war. Thousands of airplanes were patrolling the air, sometimes scouting, sometimes dropping bombs on hostile troops or on hostile stores, sometimes flying low, firing their machine guns into the faces of marching troops. Thousands upon thousands of great guns were sending enormous projectiles, which made great pits wherever they fell. Swarms of machine guns were pouring their bullets like water from a hose upon the charging soldiers.
One of the most noticeable artillery developments was the long-range gun which off and on during this period was bombarding Paris. This bombardment began on March 23d, when the nearest German line was more than sixty-two miles away. For a time the story was regarded as pure fiction, but it was soon established that the great nine-inch shells which were dropping into the city every twenty minutes came from the forests of St. Gobain, seven miles back of the French trenches near Laon, and about seventy-five miles from Paris. This was another of those futile bits of frightfulness in which the Germans reveled. Military advantage gained by such a gun was almost nothing, and the expense of every shot was out of all proportion to the damage inflicted. It only roused intense indignation and stirred the Allies to greater determination. The first day's casualties in Paris were ten killed and fifteen wounded. By the next day one would not have been able to tell from the Paris streets that such a bombardment was going on at all. The subway and surface cars were running, the streets were thronged and traffic was going on as usual. About two dozen shells were thrown into Paris every day, mainly in the Montmartre district, in a radius of about a mile. This seemed to show that the gun was immovable.
On March 29th, however, a shell struck the church of St. Gervais during the Good Friday service, killing seventy-five persons and wounding ninety. Fifty-four of those killed were women. The church had been struck at the moment of the Elevation of the Host. This outrage aroused special indignation, and Pope Benedict sent a protest to Berlin.
An examination of exploded shells indicated that the new German gun was less than nine inches in caliber, and that the projectiles, which weighed about two hundred pounds, contained two charges, in two chambers connected by a fuse which often exploded more than a minute apart. It took three minutes for each shell to travel to Paris and it was estimated that such a shell rose to a height of twenty miles from the earth. Three of these guns were used. One of these guns exploded on March 29th, killing a German lieutenant and nine men. The Kaiser was present when the gun was first used. It was said by American scientists that seismographs in the United States felt the shock of each discharge. On April 9th French aviators discovered the location of the new guns, and French artillery began to drop enormous shells weighing half a ton each near the German monsters. A few days later a French shell fell on the barrel of one of these guns and put it out of commission. Great craters were made around the other, interfering with its use, and toward the end of the period it was only occasionally that the remaining gun was fired, and no great damage resulted.
Another feature of the great German drives was the tremendous destruction that accompanied them. Not only were churches, public buildings, and private houses throughout almost the whole district turned into ruins, but the very ground itself was plowed up into craters and shell holes, and the trees smashed into mere splinters. During the whole campaign poison gas of various kinds was used in immense quantities, and it was constantly necessary for the troops to wear gas masks. Sometimes after a town had been evacuated by the enemy it was so filled with gas that it was impossible for victorious troops to enter. One of the fiercest bombardments was that directed against the Portuguese during the fighting along the Lys. The enemy made a special attempt to crush the Portuguese contingent which behaved with the utmost gallantry.