April 1.--Montdidier, quaintly seated on a steep hill beside the
Amiens-Clermont railway, is an important crossroads. On Friday the enemy
had pulled himself together and delivered along twenty-five miles of
broken country from Demuin to near Lassigny a new mass attack, supported
with a considerable number of field guns. On the French left the British
held Demuin, but were driven out of Mézières. The French bore the main
shock heroically. Step by step they fell back, leaving masses of German
dead and wounded before their lines.
The combat continued throughout Sunday, spreading out a little at both
ends, and it is impossible for me to piece together the fragmentary and
often incoherent reports from the field so as adequately to represent
its wild fluctuations.
Savagely set upon breaking through to Amiens and the Amiens-Paris
railway, von Hutier's columns succeeded in reaching the Avre at Moreuil.
Between Montdidier and Lassigny, where the front curves to the
southeast, the enemy put no less strength into his outward thrust.
Hand-to-hand fighting continued for hours in the villages of Orvillers
on the west and Plessis de Roye, near Lassigny, and the neighboring
hamlet of Plémont, all of which repeatedly changed hands. The German
troops which got into Plémont and part of Plessis were driven out by a
magnificent charge of the French, some units flying in disorder. The
slaughter of yesterday's fighting is said to exceed anything seen in the
preceding days of the battle.
On the ninth day a new chapter of the tragic story was opened. The
Allies, their lines unbroken, were standing with clenched teeth on good
positions and were hourly adding to their strength in men and guns.
Amiens appeared to the enemy like a mirage on the western horizon, and
the two Crown Princes may have reflected that there would be accounts to
pay at home if this time, after sacrifices such as can only be
paralleled in rare episodes of military history like the retreat from
Moscow, they did not bring back a victorious peace.