The Second Battle of the Marne

SEVEN The Battle of Tardenois, July 22–26

s e v e n The Battle of Tardenois, July 22–26 The German high command understood how fundamentally the events of July 18–21 had changed the German army’s strategic situation , but senior leadership did not respond with panic or desperation. Realizing that the Allied attack was losing momentum, the Germans developed a new line of defense intended to slow, or even stop, the Allied advance. The most important part of this defense was a line running north to south from just west of Soissons to the town of Epieds, near Château-Thierry. These German defenses were of a different sort from those previously used on the western front, focusing on machine gun nests carefully concealed in tall grain fields and inside deep ravines. The Germans also hid machine guns inside the remains of buildings destroyed by artillery fire and even in broken-down trucks in order to create rates of fire so high that one British veteran described facing them as like being stuck “in an April shower” of lead.1 Relying on these new defensive arrangements, the Germans did not dig in and they did not create standard World War I field defenses utilizing barbed wire. Instead, the Germans used these positions to create ambushes, trapping Allied units in ravines and woods as they advanced, then tearing into them with concealed machine guns. In the southern part of the salient, the Germans planned to defend the bottom of the “bag” by holding onto the line of the Ourcq River instead of the Marne. Withdrawing to the Ourcq gave the Germans The Battle of Tardenois, July 22–26 141 the advantage of the natural barrier the river provided, as well as the ability to use the high ground on the river’s north bank for observation. German defenses in the Ourcq region also relied upon fortified villages such as Fère-en-Tardenois and Sergy; the latter town traded hands a dozen times before the conclusion of the Second Battle of the Marne. Rearguard units centered on machine gun nests concealed in farmhouses and woods were to slow the approaching Allied advance to the Ourcq as long as possible. Thus this phase of the battle involved the Allies making slow progress against German defenses that were themselves designed to buy time for the ultimate establishment of a new defensive line on the Ourcq. The desperate fighting in the Tardenois plain during this phase has given the battle its name: the Battle of Tardenois. In the east, the Germans planned to defend by conducting a tough, slow, fighting retreat up the difficult terrain of the Ardre River valley. The Ardre, unlike the Ourcq, which runs east to west, instead runs southeast to northwest. Thus the river itself could not provide a barrier to Allied advance. Both banks of the river, however, feature sharp ravines , thick woods, and swampy ground. The marshy ground provided the Germans with a key advantage by negating much of the power of Allied armor. The Germans planned to fight on both banks of the Ardre, using ambushes to disrupt the advance of British units, thereby preventing them from advancing in tandem. In addition to machine gun teams, the Germans planned to rely heavily on poison gas to defend their new positions. Being heavier than air, poison gas could seep down into the ravines of the salient, the very places where Allied soldiers were most likely to seek cover from German machine guns. Poison gas might also have its most important effects on the relatively inexperienced Americans. At the very least, poison gas could force Allied soldiers to don unwieldy gas masks, thus complicating an already difficult offensive. The strategy appears to have worked. The American 26th Division reported that by July 25 it had suffered 169 cases of men “seriously” gassed and another 699 “lightly” gassed. Virtually all of these cases had to be evacuated from the battlefield for treatment and rest.2 This defensive scheme necessitated abandoning the small German bridgehead south of the Marne, and with it any significant strategic or operational pressure on Epernay or Rheims, but it allowed the Germans to concentrate their defense on a new natural line of defense. The Soissons to Château-Thierry highway sat inside German lines, but it was within 142 The Second Battle of the Marne easy range of Allied artillery and, in some places, Allied snipers as well. The...