died almost to the last man. Scarcely any of the meager group of survivors came out unwounded. All that did emerge were men who swam the Yser. The battlefield was a maelstrom of smoke, steel, flying sand and débris. The German version declared that 1,250 British prisoners were taken, a figure which probably included killed and wounded.2 2 Principal Sources: The London Times' "History of the War," The Sun, The Tribune, The Times, New York; Associated Press dispatches, "Nelson's History of the War" by John Buchan. II ON THE CHEMIN-DES-DAMES AND AT VERDUN— AMERICANS AT THE FRONT THE July 9, 1917-November 3, 1917 HE watchword of the French troops at Verdun in 1916 "Ils ne passeront pas"-applied equally well to a movement in the Champagne in 1917 when, on July 20, the Germans in great force made what was declared to be almost their fortieth attempt to obtain possession of the famous Chemin-des-Dames. It was perhaps the biggest offensive movement they had made since Verdun, so far as artillery was concerned, but it proved a failure. Four o'clock was striking when a terrific bombardment was opened along a front extending from just west of Cerny to Berry-au-Bac. Front lines and rear positions and all roads leading thereto were deluged with shells, large, small, and asphyxiating gas. The greatest concentrations advanced between Hurtebise and the Casemates plateau and between Casemates and the Californie plateaux, where the Germans hoped to recover Craonne. Rolling along the crest and over it, were dense clouds of black, brown, gray, and white smoke from tens of thousands of shells. The Prussian Guards with several other divisions faced the French, while fresh troops were hurried across the Ailette from the north. French guns answered shot for shot, Where German reinforcements were observed they poured a hurricane of projectiles directly into them, creating confusion and causing heavy losses. Rifle- and machine-gun fire began to crackle, trench-mortars hurled torpedoes and rifle-grenadiers opened a barrage fire. German shock units as usual led the way, followed by waves of ordinary infantry. From Hurtebise to Casemate Plateau the attacking forces soon melted to a thin line under withering French fire. Those still able to do so retreated hurriedly to their own line, which meanwhile came under an inferno of French shell-fire. In the same period from Casemate to Californie plateau other German troops were suffering heavily under similar conditions. Several times they gained small portions of the French front, but nowhere did they reach the crest itself. Aviators were busy. Sometimes the sky was almost covered with smoke from bursting shrapnel. It was a bad day for an attack because the clearness of the air made every movement, even in the narrow communicating trenches visible to airmen and observers in kite-balloons. The gain of a few hundred yards of a front-line trench, which was all that remained in German hands, was small compensation for fierce fighting in the forty attacks of ten weeks, during which conservative estimates placed the German losses near the Chemin-des-Dames at six figures. 3 G. II. Perris sought to piece together some sort of explanation of the savage obstinacy of the German efforts to win back the Chemin-des-Dames. The French line lost hardly anything after some forty attacks. Evidently the line of observatories was of great importance so long as it was thought necessary to hold the Ailette Valley, but men wondered what magic there was in the Ailette Valley that the last German reserves should be sacrificed in an effort to keep it. Military writers who likened the effort to Verdun diagnosed it as one of the most considerable military operations of the year. As the world had been very slow in waking up to the real meaning of Verdun, so was it slower in understanding how nearly the Germans succeeded at Verdun. Of the Chemin-des-Dames conflict one could say that it opened with no such success as marked the first furious onrush of the Germans on Verdun in February 1916. While in some places the Germans advanced rods, in others they were firmly held; and they took few prisoners or guns, while at Verdun they advanced more than four miles, taking 40,000 prisoners and more than one hundred guns in three days. The German General Staff spent men and blood without hesitation, not because positions were of great value, or because a successful retaking of Craonne 3 Correspondent of The Daily Chronicle (London) and The Times (New York). would materially have changed the military and strategic situation; it was because they were seeking, as they sought at Verdun, to crush the spirit of France. Russia had now been eliminated and the United States was unable to send troops in large numbers to the front, and could not send them in sufficient numbers until the next year. English man-power had reached its maximum and French man-power was declining. For another eight months It is not nose-bags filled with oats that the horses have on, the battle on the Western Front had to be fought on the Allied side by French and British. If either weakened, the whole front would be lost. So the Germans, just as at Verdun and for the same reason, were using up the best of their reserves in a desperate and terrific effort to batter in the heart of France. The supreme test of energy and endurance was going on along the Chemin-des-Dames. The Germans were seeking for а decision over France as Napoleon, in the closing hours of Waterloo, sought to have a decision with the British when he put in the Old Guard. If the Germans could have beaten France to her knees at this time, they might conceivably have won the war. The struggle on the Chemin-des-Dames was a beginning, however, rather than an ending, but it was the real Hindenburg offensive about which so much had been written. in the early spring-the effort for which the Germans had been gathering strength, the "victory" for which Hindenburg made his retreat. Had it succeeded perhaps they could have dictated peace. The attention of the Entente world at that time was fixt mainly on Russia, where disappointing events for the Allies were taking place. But the real danger-point was in France, and once more the post of honor and danger in the war had come to the French, for the battle of the Chemin-des-Dames took on an importance almost comparable to the battles of the Marne and Verdun. We saw there what seemed to be a final German bid for a decision in the west, but the French surpassed their Verdun performance in 1916, while the German performance on the Chemin-des-Dames was beneath what they did at Verdun. Furious attacks were made by the Germans at Verdun also in this first week of July 1917 against that slaughter-pen called Hill 304. No German historian is likely ever to permit the outside world to know how many lives their many futile efforts to take this hill had cost the German people. Some progress was made by them on the northern slope, but the crest remained in the hands of the French. For Hill 304 the Germans had struggled for months before the battle of the Somme sounded the requiem of the battle of Verdun. Their attacks now were all in vain. At no place were they able to make headway. An even more disastrous defeat was administered to them further west along the Chemindes-Dames. Here a major attack was delivered with all the force of infantry and artillery which had characterized the previous year's attacks at Verdun. The French, however, held all the advantage of positions. The Chemin-des-Dames runs east and west along a crest |