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An American Battlefield: Chateau-Thierry

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 neighbor-hood. 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.

Military operations difficult.

What is the nature of the terrain above those steep cliffs which enclose the valley of the Marne? Does it become more favorable to military operations than the deep depression through which the river flows? Not by any means. The surface of the table-land is broken by so many ravines and narrow valleys which descend steeply to the Marne, that it is cut into a multitude of ridges and hillocks amid which it is no longer possible to recognize the original horizontal aspect of the plateau.

Heavy impermeable soil.

Hills that are fortresses.

On the other hand, the strata which lie on the surface--loam, sandstone, and clayey sand--make a heavy, impermeable soil, quite infertile, in which it is hard to raise anything, and which is largely given over to woods. Thus, freedom of movement is impeded by deep ravines, ridges running in all directions, and more or less dense forests; an offensive is difficult, and the defensive easy. This is true in the immediate neighborhood of Chateau-Thierry, where the ravines of Vaux, Brasles, Charteves, Jaulgonne, and Treloup, and the valley of the Surmelin, slash the plateau on either side of the Marne into fragments--into forest-topped hillocks which are genuine fortresses, where the struggle was terrific and where the Allies were able to advance only one step at a time: on Hill 204, west of Chateau-Thierry, in the Bois de Mont St.-Pere, the forest of Feze above Jaulgonne, and especially on the spur of the forest of Riz; and south of the Marne, at the broad, wooded bastion of Saint-Agnan and at La Chapelle-Monthodon, where the fighting was so intense from the 15th to the 20th of July.

The villages and forests of the table-land.

Genuine mountain battles.

This strip of broken table-land becomes broader again farther upstream, above Dormans and Chatillon-sur-Marne. In that direction the plateau of the Ile de France ascends until it is more than 260 metres above the stream. Erosion has been even more active there, and in that part of the Tardenois the plateau is dissected into narrow strips separated by deep valleys, broad and moist, the largest of which is the valley of the Ardre. In the valley bottoms the streams are bordered by bands of tillage land; above, on the lower slopes, amid the vineyards and orchards which monopolize all the favorable exposures, is a multitude of small villages, some of which have become famous--Ste. Euphraise, Bligny, and Ville-en-Tardenois, whose rustic dwellings of uncut rubble, arranged amphitheatre-wise, sheltered some 500 inhabitants. Higher up, on the uneven surface of the plateau, are scattered villages built on limestone foundations--tiny fortresses, like Rumigny and Champlat, the scene of hard-fought battles. Almost the entire surface is covered with forests of pine and oak and birch. These are the woods of Le Roi, Courton, Pourcy, and Reims, where hand-to-hand fighting went on for more than a fortnight, British, Italians, and French succeeding at first in checking the enemy and then in forcing him back, in those titanic combats. They were, in reality, genuine mountain battles; for the hills reach a height of 265 metres, above the level of the plateau, while the valleys are at least 100 metres deep; and the difficulties of the uneven surface were greatly increased by the obstacles offered by forests, vineyards, streams, and the villages, closely packed with stone houses, which could easily be transformed into fortifications. The first great American battle.

A deep, broad, swampy valley, traversed by an unfordable stream; surmounted by steep slopes bristling with vineyards, orchards, villages, and diversified by quarries; above, an entanglement of low hills, ravines, and valleys, under a mantle of forest--such was the theatre of operations in which the Americans won their first great victory. A more difficult terrain could not be desired, or one better adapted to test the valor of the victorious troops. But when they had made themselves masters of this battlefield, the Allies were by no means at the end of their labors; and the difficulties of the ground to be traversed were still serious in the central portion of the theatre of operations --the Orxois.