Germans reach the Marne

On 31 May 1918 troops of the German Seventh Army stood on the Marne on a stretch from Château-Thierry to Dormans, about 25 kilometres wide according to German studies. For the first time since September 1914, when after the defeat on the Marne they had been forced to withdraw from here, German armies had again reached this river. A British chronology of the war records this under 31 May, but the first units had reached the Marne the day before. According to the British official history, drawing here on French and German sources, on 30 May, some as early as the early afternoon, the Germans stood on the river between Chartèves and Dormans, on a front of about 10 kilometres. On 31 May they extended this stretch westwards and reached the eastern edge of Château-Thierry.

The French had no time to organise bridgeheads on the north bank and blew up all the bridges. The Seventh Army’s command forbade crossing the river and ordered only that the crossings be secured. To seize them, on the night of 30/31 May the German 28th Division crossed in pontoons near Jaulgonne. By about two in the morning a whole battalion was on the south bank, followed by two companies and two more battalions. French fire prevented a bridge from being built, but the bridgehead held. The French command increasingly feared a march on Paris. The information bulletin of French GHQ of 31 May stated that the enemy’s pressure had halted on the Marne, but between the Marne and the Oise remained violent and was “ever more clearly directed towards Paris”. Château-Thierry lay about 80 kilometres from the capital as the crow flies. According to R. P. P. Rowe’s chronicle, published in 1920, the Germans announced that day that since 27 May they had taken 45,000 prisoners and 400 guns.

Everything at hand was thrown in to help, including the Americans, whom General Pershing had placed at the disposal of the French. On the night of 30/31 May the American 2nd Infantry Division was loaded onto lorries and taken to Meaux, from where it marched towards Château-Thierry along roads choked with refugees and retreating French units. Of the 3rd Infantry Division, which was still training, the first to arrive was the motorised 7th Machine Gun Battalion. It reached Château-Thierry late on the evening of 31 May, at about the time the Germans were entering the northern outskirts, and took up positions on the south bank to defend the crossings in the town together with French colonial troops. Two of its machine guns were sent to the other bank to help the French fighting beyond the old castle. On the same day the American 1st Division was finishing beating off German counter-attacks at Cantigny.

On 31 May, at General Duchêne’s headquarters in Trilport, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, the commander-in-chief of the French armies, General Philippe Pétain, and General Ferdinand Foch conferred. According to the British official history, the situation already looked less threatening than in the previous days. Foch believed that the enemy was tiring and that American reinforcements were arriving every week, and decided to give Pétain reserves cautiously, a little at a time. Pétain calculated that 37 French and British divisions had already been committed to the battle, 17 of them completely exhausted. In Paris, on which shells from the long-range gun had again been falling since 27 May, there was anxiety, and politicians, as General Henri Mordacq of Clemenceau’s office wrote, demanded the dismissal of Duchêne and above all of Pétain. On 1 June after dark the French blew up the main bridge at Château-Thierry, and the Americans of the 7th Battalion, cut off on the other bank, fought their way back across the railway bridge. On 4 June Clemenceau defended the commanders in the Chamber of Deputies. The Germans never crossed the Marne at Château-Thierry, but they were to remain on the river until July.