May 29--There has been very severe fighting today, with results
necessarily favorable on the whole to the enemy because the allied
reserves are only just beginning to reach the front. A strong
thrust toward Soissons and the road and railway from Soissons to
Coucy-le-Château at the moment when the head of the columns of the
offensive were striking south of the Vesle from Braisne, Bazoches, and
Fismes suggests that the armies engaged have already been reinforced.
[See maps in preceding pages.]
So far an almost insolent boldness has won through, but the French
resistance is steadily increasing, and more prudence will soon be
necessary. For instance, the River Aisne is a most awkward obstacle to
have on your line of communications. The enemy was able to prevent the
Allies from destroying all the bridges during the withdrawal, but it is
not too late, and the bombarding squadrons of the Allies will doubtless
find telling work to do in the early future.
Last evening when the enemy had got across the Aisne near Pontavert
part of the British brigade was falling back. A group of French
territorials, firing continuously upon the swarming graycoats, were
taking refuge in Germicourt Wood and being gradually surrounded. Some
Englishmen and older Frenchmen decided to make their last stand, to die
there together or to beat the enemy off. A handful of territorials got
away to tell the tale. The Englishmen fell to a man.
The French officer who told me of this episode of the battle spoke also
of the gallant work of a British cyclist battalion fighting with the
French before Fismes, and of the fate of some British officers who lost
their lives in blowing up Aisne bridges near Craonne. There was no time
to take the usual precautions, but the thing had to be done, and they
did it. My informant showed that he felt all the nobility and pathos of
these sacrifices, and he wished, as much as I, that the folk at home
should hear of them.
The first reports seemed to indicate that the success of the German
assault on the British sector led the defenders by a threat of
envelopment to retreat from the Aisne heights. This was not so. The
Germans first crossed the river further west, and the British left was
therefore obliged to fall back.