Throughout the day of July 19, 1917, French and German artillery were active along the whole French front, but beyond inflicting some casualties for which they paid heavily the Germans gained no advantage.
A general assault was launched by the Germans with important forces during the night of July 19, 1917, on the line along the plateau between Craonne and Vauclerc. Over the whole extent of the front there was hand-to-hand fighting, but everywhere the French succeeded in holding their positions. An energetic counterattack made between the Californie and Casemates Plateaus enabled the French to regain a trench line which the Germans had penetrated and held since the previous day. Fighting continued in the Hill 304 region, and in the Champagne, but the Germans failed to make any progress.
The Somme Battle Front, August 1, 1917.
During these days of intense fighting on the French front the British had not been marking time, but they had far less to contend against than their valorous allies. The French had to bear the brunt of German fury throughout the week. The whole French line from Verdun to St. Quentin in this period had been subjected to almost continuous attacks. At the cost of enormous losses that had not been exceeded during the war, save at Verdun in the previous year, the Germans had only gained a slight advance on a front of 2,000 feet, at the foot of the slope leading to the Chemin-des-Dames between Vauclerc and Craonne. The French now held all the important heights of the Aisne which Hindenburg had declared were impregnable.
The German High Command had given orders that the French positions on the heights must be captured at all hazards. Throughout the night of July 21, 1917, the high plateaus north of Craonne were shelled by German guns of the heaviest caliber. An attack was made at daybreak from Hurtebise to the east of Craonne. The two plateaus to the north, called the Casemates and Californie positions, are three-cornered in shape, projecting toward the north and joined by a narrow saddle. The approach to this is not so abrupt from the north as that to the plateaus themselves. The French artillery fire broke up the attack between Hurtebise and the Casemates Plateau before it could develop.
Assemblages of German troops north of Ailette were dispersed with heavy losses by the concentrated fire from French batteries. German attacks east of the plateaus led to violent hand-to-hand conflicts in which the Germans fought with great courage, but were unable to make gains. Throughout the day the battle raged, the Germans hurling great masses of men against the French lines, and, thrown back with heavy losses, again and again renewed the attacks. On the Californie Plateau after repeated repulses they succeeded in gaining a foothold, but were only able to hold it for a short time, when the French threw them back in an assault that laid many a German low.
Since the 10th of the month the British had done little but repel counterattacks, but they had won a little useful ground east of Monchy, close to the coast, and around Ypres and Lens theirs and the German batteries were busy day and night. From prisoners captured by the British it was learned that the Germans were suffering from the great wastage of men. Out of one division west of Lens it was stated that between seventy and eighty men had been buried every day for some weeks past. The British losses were also considerable, but their guns did more shooting, and the enemy's casualties were consequently much heavier. The British continued to hold the upper hand in air combats, few German machines being encountered. During July 23-24, 1917, British airmen dropped between four and five tons of bombs on enemy aerodromes, ammunition depots, and railway junctions with good results. North and east of Ypres the British made several raids during the 24th, capturing 114 prisoners, including two officers.
On the French front General Pétain, commander in chief of the French armies, found time while the battle was still raging to review the famous division whose four regiments had won the highest honors at Verdun, Nieuport, on the Somme, and in the Champagne. The troops which had been fighting for three years showed outwardly no sign of the terrible ordeals they had undergone, holding themselves proudly erect as they passed the saluting base amid the strains of military music and flying colors. General Pétain, who believed in treating his men as if they were his own sons, commended their bravery and thanked them in the name of the Republic for the brilliant example they had set to the other soldiers of France.