French take Craonne once more

On 14 October 1918, according to the history of the French 320th Infantry Regiment and French studies of the village’s past, French troops liberated the ruins of Craonne at the eastern end of the Chemin des Dames ridge above the Aisne. This time they did not have to storm them. The Germans, retreating along the whole front between the Oise and the Argonne, left the heights over which some of the bloodiest fighting on the Western Front had raged since 1914. Craonne was changing hands for the fourth time. The Germans had taken it in September 1914, the French had recaptured its ruins in May 1917, and on 27 May 1918, in the first hours of the great offensive on the Aisne, the Germans took it again.

The German retreat was the result of the defeats they had suffered in the last days of September and early October, when the Allied armies under the supreme command of Marshal Ferdinand Foch struck one after another from Flanders to the Meuse. The British broke the Hindenburg Line at Saint-Quentin and Cambrai, while the French and Americans attacked in Champagne and the Argonne. According to the German official history, as quoted by the British one, on 9 October the German Seventh, First and Third Armies began withdrawing along the whole sector from the Oise at La Fère to the Argonne to the rear Hunding-Brunhild position, running some fifteen kilometres further north, through Sissonne and Château-Porcien and along the Aisne near Vouziers. By 13 October the withdrawal was largely complete. The French Tenth Army of General Charles Mangin and the Fifth Army, taken over on 7 October by General Adolphe Guillaumat, set off in pursuit on 12 and 13 October. On 13 October the Tenth Army entered Laon.

The 52nd Infantry Division of the Fifth Army advanced on Craonne. According to the history of its 320th Infantry Regiment, on 10 October the men crossed the Aisne east of Maizy, the next day, under artillery and air attack, they approached the Californie plateau, and on 12 October, together with the 328th Regiment, they took the neighbouring village of Craonnelle and by evening stood beyond the ridge, on the river Ailette. On 13 October they crossed the Ailette and pushed on north towards Sissonne. On 14 October, the regimental history says, they liberated several villages to the rear of their march, among them Craonne and Craonnelle. French studies adopt this as the date of Craonne’s liberation. The British chronology of the war records the recapture of Craonne as early as 12 October, when the French in pursuit did indeed pass over the ridge above the village. When Craonne was formally liberated on 14 October, its ruins already lay behind the front line.

Craonne was no longer a village but a field of craters and rubble on a hillside. After the war it was classed as devastated land and rebuilt a few hundred metres lower down, at the foot of the plateau. The village’s name nonetheless stayed in French memory, not least thanks to the anonymous “Chanson de Craonne”, sung by soldiers during the French army mutinies after the failed Nivelle offensive of 1917 and long frowned upon by the military authorities. The recovery of the Chemin des Dames closed the chapter of fighting on the Aisne. Further north the Germans halted on the Hunding position, where in the second half of October they again put up stubborn resistance.