To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [255]
The captain scanned the tree line to the west, stared for a moment at the flow of poilus coming toward them through the trees. He looked now at the French officer, said, “Retreat? Hell, we just got here!”
FOR NEARLY A WEEK, THE GERMAN ADVANCE SOUTHWARD HAD obliterated any attempts the French had made to hold them back. East of the Second Division’s position, the Germans had pushed their advance to the banks of the Marne River, their engineers confident that solid bridgeheads could provide the avenues that would carry the German infantry straight down the Paris-Metz Road. But along the banks of the river, the surprised Germans were confronted by the American Third Division, who positioned themselves on the southern banks of the Marne. Though outnumbered and greatly outgunned, the Third Division plugged the gaps in the weakened French defenses and prevented the Germans from crossing the river. Faced with the unexpected blockade, the German commanders then focused their attentions toward the rolling farmlands west of Château-Thierry, where the small villages seemed virtually indefensible by the weakened French forces. The Germans hurriedly occupied several areas of high ground, and with reports from both aircraft and observation balloons, the German commanders knew that the French were melting away from large portions of the line that guarded the main road. But the observers had seen more than a desperate collapse of the French defense. German commanders read their intelligence reports with the same stunned surprise that had met them at the Marne. All along a five-mile front, the patches of woods and lowlands that bordered the vast open wheat fields showed movement they had not expected to see. By June 4, the Second Division had completed its march and had closed the wide vacancy the French could not hold. The French troops who remained along the lines on either flank of the Second had joyously welcomed the sudden influx of American strength. With the gaps closing, the French could regroup, pull themselves together into a stronger position.
The artillery on both sides had continued their relentless thunder, the French responding to the arrival of the Americans by the only show they could make, launching a meager counterattack against the Germans to their front. There had been no real success, the poilus charging into strongly held German positions, then retreating back to their lines again, reenacting the same assaults they had launched now for three years. The Germans had been halted, as they had been all along the Western Front, by the speed and depth of their own success. The German infantry had once again outstripped their own supply lines. Both sides knew that if the Germans were allowed the luxury of time, reinforcements and fresh supplies would reach them, and the massive wave could push forward again. If the Americans could not contain them, the Germans would have a main highway open to them that would lead straight to Paris.
Though the Second Division was faced with a rapidly entrenching enemy who occupied far superior ground, both French and American commanders realized that the only way to stop the German tide from advancing was to drive it back. Across from the area occupied by the Marine brigade, north of a small village called Lucy-le-Bocage, the French maps showed a patch of forest, said to be lightly manned by German defenders. The French believed the Germans had halted north of the woodlands, and that if the Marines could make a quick thrust, the woods could be cleared of any resistance. The Marines would then have a well-protected jumping-off point to launch a vital counterattack at the German positions to their north. The American commanders had no reason to doubt the assessment of their French counterparts. It would simply be up to the Marines to get the job done, to move quickly across the open fields to occupy this one-mile-square patch of forest the maps called