Germans take Fère-en-Tardenois

On 29 May 1918, the third day of the German offensive on the Aisne, French troops abandoned the small town of Fère-en-Tardenois, which lies roughly halfway between the Aisne and the Marne. The British chronology of the war and R. P. P. Rowe’s chronicle published in 1920 state that the Germans took it on 30 May. The British official history (Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. III), based on the French official history and the German monograph on the battle, as well as German works, point however to 29 May, and that is the date we adopt.

Fère-en-Tardenois mattered far more than its size suggested. It was an important railway station through which supply trains for the troops on the Aisne were routed, and the main supply centre of the French Sixth Army. Since the end of April the town had housed the headquarters of the British IX Corps, whose divisions had come to the Aisne to rest. In the same town in 1914, during the First Battle of the Aisne, Field Marshal Sir John French had his headquarters, which he moved north from here only in October. After the front was broken on 27 May, the British set up a reserve ammunition dump at Fère, and the French command sent a cavalry corps to cover the town. On the evening of 28 May the headquarters of General Jean Degoutte’s French XXI Corps was still here.

In the early hours of 29 May a counter-attack by a fresh French division quickly collapsed, and the German divisions in the centre of the attack, well supported by field guns and mortars, broke all resistance. French accounts speak of groups of a few hundred men, with no contact with each other, ignorant of their neighbours’ positions or intentions. That day the Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, came to Fère, wishing to see for himself what was happening. In the market square he found General Féraud, the cavalry commander, but the Germans were already on the northern edge of the town. The Prime Minister left at once for Degoutte’s new headquarters at Fresnes, a few kilometres to the south. The general told him bluntly that he was not in control of the battle: “We are not carrying out a methodical, organised retreat, we are simply going backwards.” Clemenceau left with the impression that no one knew where anyone actually was.

German works credit the capture of Fère-en-Tardenois to the 36th Division, while the British official history says briefly that the French abandoned the town in the sector of the German 10th Division’s attack. The same day, on the western flank, the Germans finally took Soissons, and in the centre they crossed the upper course of the Ourcq. In the afternoon the commander of the German 28th Division ordered his men to leave their heavy equipment behind and march straight for the Marne, and by evening his units stood only a few kilometres from the river. In the captured towns and depots the Germans found enormous stocks of food and wine, which eased their supply but weakened discipline. For almost two months Fère-en-Tardenois became an important communications hub for the German troops in the new salient. The Allies retook it only during the July counter-offensive on the Marne, on 28 July according to the British chronology.