_In his dispatches on June 2 and June 5 Mr. Perris gave these further
details of how the battle began:_
As further details which I have received of their part in the beginning
of the battle clearly show, these divisions, the 50th, 8th, 21st, and
25th, were, it will be remembered, tired from bitter and repeated
actions in the course of the northern offensive. They had been on the
front only seventeen days when last Monday's attack was made, and
therefore had hardly had time to become thoroughly acquainted with the
sector. The main force of the enemy assault fell on the front of the
50th and 8th Divisions, against whom there were four German divisions
in line and two more in immediate reserve. The odds against the British
on this day were two and a half to one.
The 50th Division on the left was doing well on the Craonne Plateau,
when in the course of the morning they suddenly found that the enemy
was behind them. Owing to this surprise, the neighboring brigade of the
50th Division suffered badly.
By afternoon General Fritz von Below's men had got to the line of
the river, and in the evening the British were back at Guyencourt.
By Wednesday evening they held a large crescent around Fismes from
Lopeigne on the west through Coulanges and Lagery back to the Vesle at
Muizon. By this time the fighting strength of the British units was
greatly reduced, but reinforcements were coming up and the worst of the
crisis was over. The full story of the splendid episode can hardly yet
be told, but some day it will shine among the greatest achievements of
the war.
Some time must yet elapse ere we can know fully and exactly what
occurred on the Chemin des Dames at and after 4 A. M. on May 27. Many
of the combatants have died a martyr's death and been buried by alien
hands where they fell. Many more will long languish in prisoners'
camps; but the remnants of some regiments have now come down from the
front to rest, and by piecing together the narratives of these weary
men it is possible to make the first outline of the story that will one
day be told in all its pitifulness and terror.
One of them is the French infantry regiment which had long held the
central sector of this front. For this last trial it had been prepared
by months of trench raiding and strengthening its defenses. Submerged
by a storm of fire and poison gas and by wave upon wave of assault,
it went down in a single morning, fighting the hopeless fight to the
bitter end. A small number lived to cross the Aisne in the afternoon,
and these had to continue the struggle for four days and nights,
practically without respite. Few are those, even in this war, who have
survived such agony.
They were warned, and, so far as their local means allowed,
were prepared for the attack. Gas masks, machine guns, grenade
stores--everything was ready. The order was to hold ground between the
second and third positions or to die in the effort, and it was carried
out. It was to be expected that the telephone wires would be cut.
There remained carrier pigeons. A rolling barrage two miles deep and
of indescribable violence extinguished the poor efforts of the local
batteries to reply. Thick clouds of artificial smoke, gas, and dust
shrouded the assault, so that rocket signals were not seen at the rear
and the enemy was invisible till he reached the parapets.
The line was almost immediately broken and the battle became a struggle
of isolated groups, heavily outnumbered without the possibility of
reinforcement, defending scraps of broken trench dugouts or quarries
and still resisting long after the main tide of the conflict had passed
south.
A copy lies before me of messages dated from 3:30 to 8:30 A. M. and
sent back from these isolated groups by pigeon. No words could be so
eloquent as their laconic brevity. When permission to retreat was given
some officers refused to avail themselves of it.
The Colonel, with his staff papers, crossed the Aisne at 10 A. M. and
organized the defense of the passage. The survivors of the regiment
were re-formed on the south bank, and on the following day received
a reinforcement of men, bringing it up to a quarter of its original
strength. This handful had to meet the heavy attack southwest of
Soissons on May 29, and a series of attacks on the following two days.
No more was humanly possible, and they were withdrawn. They say that
not a man had uttered a complaint.