In a single day the German offensive was effectually blocked at the Marne. Despite the enemy"s utmost efforts he could make no further advance.
Then Foch, the great French strategist and Allied generalissimo, struck the blow for which he had patiently bided his time!
Apparently having advance information of the German plans, or perhaps surmising them, General Foch had been preparing a surprise for the Crown Prince. In the forest of Villers-Cotterets on the German right flank, he had quietly ma.s.sed large forces, including some of the best French regiments, together with the foreign legion, Moroccan and other crack troops, and many Americans. Everything possible had been done to keep these troop movements secret from the enemy.
On Thursday morning, July 18, 1918, a heavy attack was launched in force at the Germans under General von Boehm all along the line from Chateau Thierry on the Marne to the Aisne river northwest of Soissons.
The Germans were taken completely by surprise, and town after town was captured from them with comparatively slight resistance. When the first shock of surprise was over, their resistance stiffened, but the Allies continued to advance. Mounted cavalry were once more used to a.s.sist the infantry in the open, while tanks in large numbers were used to clear out enemy machine-gun nests.
The American troops, fighting side by side with the French, did their work in a manner to excite the admiration of their allies, and acquitted themselves like veterans. Thousands of prisoners were taken, with large numbers of heavy guns and great stores of ammunition, besides thousands of machine guns, many of which were turned against the enemy. The strategy of General Foch received world-wide applause. His master stroke met with immediate success.
By the 20th of July Soissons was threatened by the Allies. The Germans, finding themselves caught in a dangerous salient and attacked fiercely on both flanks, hurriedly retreated to the north bank of the Marne and were rapidly pressed back farther. Their condition was critical and the German Crown Prince was obliged to call for a.s.sistance from Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, commanding in the north. Taking advantage of this, the British and French in the north made frequent attacks, gaining ground and taking prisoners at numerous points.
For ten days the Allies continued their victorious progress on both sides of the Soissons-Reims salient, the Germans continuing to retire under strong pressure. They were forced back to the Oureq river, then to the Vesle, where they made a determined stand. Fere-en-Tardenois and Fismes fell into the hands of the victorious French and Americans, the latter gaining a notable victory in the occupation of Fismes over the vaunted Prussian guards, who had been brought up to endeavor to stay their progress. The first week of August saw most of the Reims salient wiped out by the German retreat, while rear-guard actions were being fought along the Vesle as the Germans sought defensive positions farther in the rear.
The prisoners captured by the Allies in their drive up to that time numbered more than 35,000 and more than 700 heavy guns also fell into their possession, with immense quant.i.ties of ammunition and stores. The Germans, however, succeeded in destroying many of the ammunition dumps and vast supplies which had been stored in the salient for their expected drive on Paris.
As they retired the Germans burned many of the occupied French villages, pursuing their usual policy. As many as forty fires were observed on the horizon at one time as the Allies advanced.
Soissons was retaken on August 2, and the valley of the Crise was crossed by the Allies, who dominated the plains in the German rear with their big guns.
The German losses in the great battle and retreat from the Marne were variously estimated at from 120,000 to 200,000. General von Boehm avoided a first-cla.s.s disaster, but his defeat was a serious one and had far-reaching moral consequences among the enemy.
It was estimated that from the beginning of their offensive in March, the German armies lost more than 1,000,000 men in killed, wounded and prisoners. The Austrians in their ill-fated offensive of 1918 lost more than 250,000 men.
FOCH A MARSHAL OF FRANCE
On August 6 General Ferdinand Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, was elevated by the French council of ministers to the rank of a Marshal of France. In presenting his name Premier Clemenceau said:
"At the hour when the enemy, by a formidable offensive, counted on s.n.a.t.c.hing the decision and imposing a German peace upon us, General Foch and his admirable troops vanquished him. Paris is not in danger, Soissons and Chateau Thierry have been reconquered, and more than villages have been delivered. The glorious Allied armies have thrown the enemy from the banks of the Marne to the Aisne."
AMERICANS AT FISMES
The American troops covered themselves with glory at many points in the Allied drive, notably in the hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Fismes on August 4, when they captured that German base. The fighting was said to have been the bitterest of the whole war, the Prussian guards asking no quarter and being bayoneted or clubbed to death as they stood by their machine guns.
BRITISH VICTORY IN THE NORTH
On the Amiens front, in Picardy, the British Fourth Army, under General Rawlinson, and the French First Army, under General Debentry, stormed the German positions on August 8 on a front of over 20 miles, capturing 14,000 prisoners and 150 guns, and making an advance of over seven miles.
ALLIED GAINS IN PICARDY
Before the Germans had time to recover from the surprise of Marshal Foch"s attack on the Marne, and while they were still retreating to the Vesle, the Allies delivered another heavy blow, this time on the Albert-Montdidier front in Picardy. Here the British and French suddenly attacked in force on the morning of August 8, stormed the enemy positions along a thirty-mile front and on the first day of the attack penetrated to a depth of seven miles.
For several days the enemy retreated, closely pursued by allied cavalry and tanks, which for the first time fought in a combination that proved irresistible. The tanks used were of a new small variety, known as "whippets," which rapidly wiped out the machine-gun nests with which the enemy sought to stem the tide of the victorious onrush. Some American troops fought with the British in their advance and gained high praise from the Allied commanders.
By August 15 the total number of prisoners captured by the British Fourth Army, under General Rawlinson, was 21,844. In the same period of one week the prisoners taken by the French First Army amounted to 8,500, making a total of 30,344 Germans captured in the operations of the Allied armies on the Montdidier-Albert front, besides 700 heavy guns, quant.i.ties of machine guns, and other important spoils of war.
North of the Somme, between Albert and Arras, the Germans continued to fall back to the old Hindenburg line, where there were strong defensive positions, with the British and French keeping in close touch with their retreat. On August 15 they had definitely given up the towns of Beaumont-Hamel, Serre, Bucquoy, and Puisieux-au-Mont, and at several points had crossed the Ancre river.
Field Marshal Haig announced that the proportion of German losses to those of the Allies in the Picardy offensive were greater than at any other period of the war. The total Allied casualties were not as large as the number of Germans taken prisoner.
JOY IN AMIENS AND PARIS
One important result of the British drive was that Amiens, the "dead city of Picardy," began to come to life again. Its population of 150,000, including 40,000 refugees, had fled before the German offensive in March, 1918, but the former inhabitants began to return when the menace of the invader disappeared, as the invader himself was chased back toward the Somme. A service of thanks to the Allied arms was held in the Great Cathedral of Notre Dame in Amiens, August 15. Despite the damage from German guns and bombs, the cathedral retained the t.i.tle of the most beautiful in all France.
The city of Paris, at the same time, quietly celebrated the great change in the situation wrought in one short month. Just four weeks before, on July 18, the residents of Paris had been awakened by the sounds of such a cannonade as they never had heard before. It was General Mangin"s counter-preparation against the great German attack which the enemy believed was to bring him to the gates of Paris. In the meantime the Germans, who were at the gates of Amiens, Reims, and Compiegne, had been soundly beaten and outgeneraled at every point, and the initiative had been forced from them by the military genius of Marshal Foch. The effect upon the Germans was apparent from the fact that General Hans von Boehm, the German "retreat specialist" had been appointed to the supreme command on the Somme front. The German withdrawal north of Albert was looked upon as the first application of his tactics. It was General von Boehm and his former command, the German Eighth Army, that stood the brunt of the Allied pressure in the Marne salient previous to the retreat of the Huns to the north of the Vesle river, where they were still standing in the middle of August.
BOLSHEVIKI EXECUTE EX-CZAR
Former Czar Nicholas of Russia was executed by the Bolsheviki in July, 1918, having been held as a prisoner since his dethronement.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BATTLE LINE ON THE WESTERN FRONT AUGUST 21,
Shaded portions of map show territory gained by American and Allied troops during July and August, 1918. Most of the territory gained by the Germans in their 1918 offensive was recaptured by the Allies before September 1, 1918.]
CHAPTER III
AMERICANS AT CHATEAU THIERRY
_Personal Accounts of Battle--Gas and Sh.e.l.l Shock--Marines Under Fire--Americans Can Fight and Yell--Getting to the Front Under Difficulties--The Big Day Dawns--The Sh.e.l.ls Come Fast--A Funeral at the Front--_Impression of a French Lieutenant-- Keeping the Germans on the Run._
The name of Chateau Thierry will be long remembered in the United States, for it was there the American fighting quality was for the first time clearly impressed upon the Germans, to their immense astonishment, and with far-reaching effect. The German people and the German army had been told that the United States had no army, navy, or fighting quality; that the talk of an American army in Europe was "Yankee bluff," and nothing more; that even if we could raise an army we could not send it across the ocean, first because we had no ships, second because if we had ships the submarines of Germany would surely sink them. Yet here at Chateau Thierry they were confronted by United States troops and soundly beaten.
That effect upon the Germans was in itself of tremendous significance; but the historic effect was greater, and will grow in importance with the pa.s.sage of time, for it is a fact, unperceived by onlooking nations at the moment, that it was the turning point of the war; and that the turning was accomplished by troops of a nation that hated war and was supposed to be incapable of military development; and that these troops had met and whipped the choicest troops of a power that above all things was military, that had a.s.sumed proprietary rights in the art of war, and believed itself invincible.
Late in February, 1918, General Ludendorff had told a Berlin newspaper correspondent that on the first of April he would be in Paris. It was inconceivable to the Germans that with the thorough preparation of a mighty army for an offensive that by sheer weight of numbers should drive through an opposition twenty times as strong as that which then confronted them, they could not with ease push in between the French and British forces, thrust straight through to Paris (as a spectacular performance rather than a vital military operation), and then walk over to the channel ports of France and bring both France and England to a plea for mercy.
From the 21st of March until along in May, 1918, it looked as though they might succeed. That is, to anyone unaware of the strategy of Marshal Foch, who sold terrain by the foot for awful prices in German lives, and held an unbroken front until such time as American forces could be brought into action, instead of wearing out his reserves and weakening his power for an offensive.
Unity of command had been accomplished by that time at the urgent demand of the United States Government. Foch had saved France and the world at the first battle of the Marne. Being given supreme authority over all the allied forces, as soon as the arrival of American troops in great numbers had been thoroughly established, he was ready; and the offensive pa.s.sed from German to allied hands.
The tremendous German drive, which Ludendorff had confidently promised the German people would bring a smashing and decisive victory, was stopped. Retrocession began. On the Marne again, in July, 1918, in the sector held by Americans an action began at Chateau Thierry which forced the German retreat that in a few weeks was to shake the heart of Germany, scare out Bulgaria, Austria and Turkey, in the early autumn bring Germany to a plea for peace, send Ludendorff himself into retirement, dethrone the Kaiser, do away with the imperial form of government, set up a republic, and create conditions that would quash for all time the power of Prussia to disturb a decent world.
Floyd Gibbons, correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, a noncombatant who wanted to see the combat he was there to report, was in that memorable action. He lost his left eye there, and was otherwise severely shattered, but he got his story through. His home paper some months afterward gave Gibbons well earned credit for that contribution to current history. It said he "helped to put the Marines where they belong in the war"s history, for he was with them in their early exploits and fell in one of their battles. Six thousand out of 8,000 engaged was their toll. They fought with the French through Belleau Wood, heartening the brave, tired, discouraged poilus, and after they came out upon the other side the name of the battlefield was changed to the "Wood of the American Marines." Mr. Gibbons says that when Marshal Foch began his great offensive, which in cosmic importance is second only to creation, he selected the units in which he had the most faith. These units were chosen not because they were braver nor more sacrificial, but because they knew. They were the Foreign Legion of France, two divisions of American Regulars, and the United States Marines."
From that day there was no change in the favorable fortunes of war on the western front.
AMERICANS CAN FIGHT AND YELL
An eyewitness of the first days of the Chateau Thierry battle thus describes the capture of the Beauleau wood:
"The Americans moved stealthily with fixed bayonet until they got into the edge of the woods and atop of the German machine gun-tiers. Then the farm boys cheered, and the lumberjacks shouted, and the Indians yelled. They were where they could mix it at close range with the Boche, and that was what they wanted.
"Their yells could be heard a mile away. They were up against two of the Kaiser"s redoubtable divisions, the Two Hundredth Jaegers and the Two Hundred and Sixteenth reserve division. They fought with vim and joy.