nearer the stream, are magnificent orchards: the
cherry tree joins with the vine to impart to those slopes an aspect of
rustic opulence. Huddled white villages, with tawny-hued pointed roofs,
follow one another in regular succession on the rolling ground. Their
names have lately won a terrible celebrity: Binson, Vandieres,
Vincelles, Treloup. Sandstone quarries burrow into the summit of the
cliffs and furnish shelters for the defenders. Finally, there are strips
of forest along the slopes wherever the exposure is thought poorly
suited for crops. All these features unite to form a cheerful, animated,
lovely landscape; but at the same time a conglomeration of obstacles
which the Allied troops were able to overcome only after fierce
fighting.

[Sidenote: Villages in the hillsides.]

Below the little town of Dormans, the valley narrows temporarily: from
Treloup to Brasles it is frequently less than 500 metres in width. The
cliff, although steep as before, is less cut up, and the patches of
forest are large. At the mouths of the smaller affluent valleys, the
villages rear their church-towers on the hillsides, overlooking the
lowest vineyards and orchards; on this right bank are Jaulgonne,
Charteves, and Mont Saint-Pere, all taken by the Allies late in July,
and Fossoy, where the Americans successfully repulsed the German attack
of July 15.

[Sidenote: The ancient town of Chateau-Thierry.]

But now the valley widens once more as it enters the broad basin of
Chateau-Thierry. It is a beautiful spot, and at the same time, of great
military value. The little town long ago forgot its role of fortress,
but has been brutally reminded of it by the violence of the battles that
have been fought in its neighborhood. In the foreground is the wide
expanse of fields in the valley bottom; then a suburb of the town
enclosed between two arms of the Marne. Across the river, scaling the
slopes of a hill crowned by the ruins of a castle, the town rises,
terrace-like, at the mouth of a narrow valley. The position can be
carried by frontal attack only on the heels of a defeated foe, as
Napoleon carried it in 1814, and Franchet d'Esperey just a hundred years
later. But in 1918 the Americans had to take Chateau-Thierry in flank,
and in order to force their way into the town, had to fight the bloody
battles of Vaux, Bouresches, and Etrepilly, which carried them to the
north of the town and hastened its evacuation.

[Sidenote: Military operatio