at the base

from the firing line. I was at the base hospital A month a month, and spent most of the time in the sun- hospital. shine trying to get rid of the heavy bronchial condition that had fastened itself to me. The hospital was full-but not with Americans. I was surrounded by fellows from all the allied nations, and had the chance to talk with them. They're a great lot, and anybody who has any doubt about whether we are going to win this war needs only a few minutes' conversation with some of the chaps that have been over there for years. You bet we're going to winthere isn't a thought of anything else but victory.

At the end of my month at the base hospital it was decided that I was not fit for the firing line. Uncle Sam is mighty good to his fellows -he does not believe in placing them under unnecessary risks, and when the doctors said that my bronchial condition was practically chronic, and the life on the firing line would only aggravate it, I got my orders to go home and Orders to take up service in a climate where there was less chance of my becoming a liability and where there was just as much work for me to do as in France, though of a different nature.

It was a disappointment, but I'm glad to think that I had those six days on the firing line, and proud to think that I was with the first batch of Americans to see service in the fight against autocracy.

That portion of France in which the American army did its most active fighting is a country filled with historic and romantic associations. It is also a country of great scenic beauty. The following article describes graphically the general aspect of this portion of France.

go home.

AN AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD

T

RAOUL BLANCHARD

ERRIFIC battles, ushering in the dawn of victories which will ensure the freedom of the world, were fought in July and August, 1918, between the Marne and Vesle rivers, from Château-Thierry to Soissons and Fismes. In this soul-stirring struggle the young American troops played a large part, and played it with heroism and success. has occurred to us, therefore, that the American people will be glad to become acquainted A glorious with the battlefield made glorious by their sons, with the soil which will some day be a consecrated goal of pilgrimage for the entire nation.

battlefield.

The field once the

tiful

country.

It

This field of death, bristling with ruins still most beau- smouldering, was formerly, and will soon be once more, a beautiful stretch of country. Here we are in the heart of the Ile de France, and the countryside displays all the gracious charm of a typical French landscape. With its undulating plateaus, pleasant vales, broad green valleys, forests and greensward, châteaux and villas, small towns, and dear old villages thronged with souvenirs of the past, the district between the Marne and the Aisne was peculiarly representative of France-the France of the Merovingians and Capets as well as of the twentieth century.

There is no manufacturing and little com. mercial activity; but a skillful, varied, and persistent culture of the soil, with special attention to those most exacting of crops, the vine and vegetables, which are successfully raised

Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1918.

only by dint of hard labor, and to the production of vast quantities of sugar-beets and cereals.

lages are

The villages, built of the beautiful stone of The vilthe district, have, one and all, an air of dignity built of and prosperity which gives animation to the stone. landscape. The very names are among the most pleasant to the ear, and often among the most illustrious in the language. Our great men of letters, La Fontaine and Racine, Pope Urban II, who preached the First Crusade, and other statesmen and princes, all born in the province, had already made it a genuinely historic spot; and the memory of the battles fought by Napoleon at Château-Thierry and Soissons, against the invaders of 1814, has not yet faded. When they turned the enemy back from Paris, the Americans were fighting in the most truly French of all the districts of France, and their gallantry has imparted to it a new charm, a more resplendent glory.

raphy

Marne to

But this attractive region does not exhibit everywhere the same features. The topog- Topography of the Ile de France is so varied that from the one can distinguish several families, or groups, the Vesle. of landscapes between the Marne and the Vesle. Let us follow them, in the order followed by the different stages of the battle.

The southern portion is the most elevated and most picturesque; it includes the shores of the Marne, from Epernay to ChâteauThierry, as well as the hills and valleys to the eastward, grouped about the Ardre River in the district called the Tardenois. In the centre the battlefield embraces plateaus studded with low hills, half hidden by broad patches of forest, and cut by deep, narrow valleys-those of the Ourcq and its affluents; whence the region is known as the district of the Ourq, or the Orxois. Lastly, to the north this undulating ground gives place to a practically level plateau, a

The wake

of the

vast table-land of cultivated fields, through which flow the deep ravines of the Aisne, the Vesle, and their affluents. This is the Soissonnais.

From the Tardenois to the Soissonnais by American way of the Orxois, let us follow in the wake of the French and American armies, in their decisively victorious advance.

armies.

On emerging from the plains of Champagne, at Epernay, the Marne flows through the plateaus of the Ile de France as far as Paris, and the country along its banks changes its aspect. Instead of the wide valley which seems one with the immense bare plain, the stream, breaking out a path for itself through the solid mass of the plateau, has cut a gash from 500 to 2000 metres in width, which turns and winds in graceful and ever-changing curves. Thus, although its general course is from east to west, the trend of the walls of the valley constantly changes and bears toward every point of the compass in turn. Moreover, these walls, intersected by the ravines and valleys of numerous tributary streams, are cut up into cut deep. capes, bastions, and deep hollows. Finally, the cliff from whose summit the plateau overlooks the valley, and whose average height is about 150 metres, at times rises steeply from the lowland, and again is broken up into terraces following the different strata of which it is composed. Thus, although the topographical elements are simple enough, they lend themselves to an ever-changing combination of forms, which gives to the landscape its great charm, and at the same time offers some formidable advantages of various kinds from a military standpoint.

Valleys

of stream

The placid

Marne.

The bright green ribbon of the Marne winds along the valley bottom. The placid stream, about a hundred metres wide and broken here and there by islets, wanders from one bank to

easy to

the other, lined by poplars and willows. On either side of its limpid waters are broad fields, whose delicate greenery frames the sparkling line of the river, which forms a by no means impassable obstacle. In the days just preceding the German offensive of July 15, American patrols constantly crossed between The Marne Château-Thierry and Mézy, and picked up pris- cross, oners and information on the northern bank. In like manner, during that offensive the attacking German troops were able without great losses to cross the Marne and attack the defenders on the southern bank. To be sure, the Allied air-men made their life a burden by keeping up an incessant bombardment of the bridges, large and small.

But the real obstacle which this valley of fers is found in the slopes which dominate it, and it was there that the fiercest fighting took Fierce fighting place until the day when the French and Amer- on the icans, having thrown the enemy back across the slopes. river, scaled the cliffs of the right bank on his heels and dislodged him therefrom. In this neighborhood there were two sectors of terrific fighting-that of Châtillon-Dormans upstream, and that of Château-Thierry below.

valley

slopes.

Going upstream, the valley is quite wide: A wide from Monvoisin to Dormans, by Château- with Thierry, it measures two kilometres almost steep everywhere. The high cliff which overlooks it on the north, cut by a multitude of narrow valleys coming down from the table-land of the Tardenois, forms a series of buttresses which make excellent defensive positions. On the sharpest, which is a genuine peninsula overhanging the main valley, sits the village of Châtillon, formerly crowned by a haughty feudal castle, on whose ruins was erected a statue of Pope Urban II, who long ago had trouble with the German emperors. The slopes below are hard to climb, because of their steepness