"Our pilots," said a group commander, "had orders not to come back with a single cartridge or bomb, and you may take it from me that they do not waste their munitions on clouds."
On Thursday another group commander, receiving news that an enemy column was stretched over three miles of a certain road, sent about fifty machines to deal with it. They charged as a squadron of cavalry would do, coming down to within twenty and even ten yards of the earth, and with bombs and machine guns effectually dispersing and demoralizing the graycoats.
Many enemy planes and sausage balloons have been brought down, but that is in the circumstances a secondary effort. Lines of communication and rear camps and centres of the enemy also have been harried. On Friday no less than seventy tons and on Saturday sixty-two tons of explosives were dropped by airmen on German bivouac troops.
IN THE MARNE VALLEY
I went down to the Marne Valley yesterday afternoon and from the edge of a wooded hill looked across over part of the north bank where the Germans are established. Established is hardly the word, for everything is floating and provisional in this phase of the war, and it is more than ever invisible except where infantry actions are in course, because there are no fixed intrenched lines. I could not find any trace of the enemy on the opposite amphitheatre of hills, but an observer hanging above at the tail of a sausage balloon may have seen something, for from time to time the French guns blazed angrily over my head and buildings were on fire in the villages.
In this winding stretch of the valley crests rise 500 feet above the broad, strong stream, and there are five or six miles between the two ridges. The French have guns and machine guns in position, and any considerable attempt to cross will be very costly.
Two hundred Germans came over yesterday morning and are now more or less contented guests of the French Republic. But the enemy does not seem to contemplate an immediate passage, if at all. It would probably be tried further west at some point where the northern hills are more dominant. The section of the important objectives appears to lie in this direction.
Immediately behind the zone of mutual observation, all the humming activities of arms are proceeding with a freedom unknown in the days of trench warfare, partly because this is the nature of the war of movement and partly because, like other services, the air squadrons are dispersed and the German airmen cannot obtain more than local and momentary equality. And amid all the flow of troops and guns, the pitching of camps, the laying of field telegraphs, shifting of hospitals and hangars, bringing up of munitions and supplies, there is an air of calm over the whole scene that would astonish those who see the offensive only as it is concentrated in a newspaper sheet.
FIERCE FIGHTING JUNE 3
In his dispatch dated June 4 Mr. Perris described the fighting on the 3d, which was the last desperate attempt of the Germans to advance in that phase. He wrote: