The attempt of part of the German 36th Division to cross the Marne at
Jaulgonne was frustrated brilliantly by the Americans and French. It
appears that a few men succeeded in getting across the river Thursday
night [May 30] at this point, eight miles east of Château-Thierry,
where the Marne makes a loop by the north.
They took shelter in the cutting and tunnel of the Paris-Châlons
railway, which runs along the south bank, and though they lost
seriously and their pontoons were destroyed, they got reinforcements
over to the strength of a battalion.
An attack to clear them out was, therefore, organized, and this
took place Sunday night, [June 2.] By that time the Germans had put
twenty-two light bridges across the stream, of which four had been
smashed by the French artillery, and had established a bridgehead with
six machine guns and a hundred men in the railway station on the south
bank opposite Jaulgonne.
This post was frontally attacked by a section of dismounted cavalry
who, however, were held up by machine-gun fire until American machine
guns came into action. Two sections of French infantry simultaneously
fell upon the bridgehead and the Germans broke before them.
The prisoners, of whom there are a hundred, declare that their officers
abandoned them at the beginning of the attack. A few men escaped by
swimming, and thirty or forty others gained the northern bank by the
pontoon boats. The rest of the battalion was wiped out.
The German losses in the action at the bridge of Château-Thierry were
severe. It is estimated that a thousand bodies lay by and near the
bridge, and the American machine gunners fired tens of thousands of
cartridges.