May 30.--During last night the enemy took Fère-en-Tardenois and drove
the allied rearguards back to Vesilly, whence the line ran this morning
northeast to the outskirts of Rheims. As the Marne is thus brought into
the picture, it is pertinent to point out that in the famous battle of
September, 1914, the Germans reached to more than thirty miles south of
the river in this region.
This is at present their strongest push. The road from Soissons to
Compiègne is closed to them, but further south they have got to the
road Soissons-Hartennes.
Lest it be thought that the allied reserves are slow in coming into
play, I may point out that the front of the offensive has been nearly
doubled in length in the last three days. At the outset it was about
thirty-five miles. It is now sixty. Merely to make good losses and to
provide a screen of troops along this greater extent, with everything
in movement, has required effort.
At midnight on May 26 the battlefront was ten miles away from Soissons.
The few civilian inhabitants and the many hospital patients had settled
down to sleep, the usual hour for airplane raids having passed.
An hour later they and the few army bureaus in the neighborhood were
aroused by a sudden outbreak of bombardment, such as they had never
heard before, and soon afterward shells began to crash upon the town.
With the wounds of four years of war upon it, the northern quarter
completely destroyed and the cathedral grievously damaged, Soissons
still possessed something of its old-time grace and air of substantial
well being. It would be an exaggeration to compare it with Richmond,
for the Aisne is not the Thames and the French woods are not English
parks; but after the victory of Malmaison had put the boche back beyond
the Ailette we hoped to see the great mansions repaired and the happy
life of the shopping quarters gradually revived. Today the Germans are
camped in the smoking ruins of Soissons.