ed all wire communications and flooded battery
emplacements and machine gun posts with every brand of poison gas known
to German kultur. Dust and artificial smoke clouds separated the
defenders into small groups and screened the attacking waves until they
had actually penetrated the French positions.

The French fought hard to resist the enemy flood across the Chemin des
Dames with its ground sacred with tragic memories, but a withdrawal was
necessary. The French command was forced to order a retreat to the
Aisne. Hard-fighting French divisions and some units of the British
Fifth Army, which had been badly hit in Picardy in March, made an
orderly withdrawal southward.

On the second day of the fight the enemy made a strong thrust toward
Soissons, and after keeping the city under continual bombardment,
succeeded in overcoming all resistance and occupying the city on May
29th. On the first day of the attack alone, twelve thousand explosive,
incendiary and poison gas shells were hurled in amongst the hospitals in
Soissons. American ambulance units did heroic work in the removal of the
wounded.

The Germans forced a crossing on the Aisne. On the following day, May
30th, they had crossed the Vesle River and had captured
Fere-en-Tardenois. On the following day their victorious hordes had
reached the Marne and were closing in on Chateau-Thierry.

Some idea of the terrific strength of the enemy offensive may be gained
from a recapitulation which would show that in five days the Germans had
pushed through five successive lines of Allied defence, and had
penetrated more than twenty-five miles. On the first day, they had
captured the Chemin des Dames, on the second day, they had overcome all
resistance on the Aisne, on the third day, their forces, pushing
southward, had crossed the Vesle River, on the fourth day, they had
destroyed the lines of resistance along the Ourcq, on the fifth day,
they had reached the Marne.

It was a crisis. The battle front formed a vast triangle with the apex
pointing southward toward Paris. The west side of the triangle extended
fifty miles northward from the Marne to the Oise near Noyon. The east
side of the triangle ran north-eastward thirty miles to Rheims. The
point of this new thrust at Paris rested on the north bank of the Marne
at Chateau-Thierry. The enemy had advanced to within forty miles of the
capital of France; the fate of the Allied world hung in the balance.

Undoubtedly I am pre