Germans retake Noyon

The British chronology of the war records under the date 25 September 1914 the recapture by the Germans of Noyon, a town on the Oise about 100 kilometres north of Paris. Four days earlier the same chronology had recorded that the French had recovered Noyon. The entry of General Castelnau’s troops into the town on 21 September is, however, poorly documented, and if it did happen, the French were unable to hold on there. The entry for 25 September thus means above all that Noyon was by then firmly in German hands.

In these days the weight of the fighting was moving ever further north. The French Second Army was trying to turn the German flank between the Oise and the Somme, but at Lassigny, Roye and Chaulnes it ran into one German corps after another, brought from other sectors of the front. At Noyon the front line settled a few kilometres west and south of the town, between Lassigny and the Oise.

Noyon long remained one of the points of the German front line closest to Paris. The Germans left it only in March 1917, when they withdrew to the Hindenburg Line.