Postcard map of the Chemin des Dames between Soissons and Rheims. The view is facing north towards the heights of the 'Ladies Road,' the Aisne River to its south. The Germans held the high ground after the retreat from the Marne in 1914. The French suffered heavy casualties taking the Chemin des Dames in the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, an offensive that led to widespread mutinies in the French Army. The Third German Drive of 1918, the Third Battle of the Aisne, drove the French, and supporting British troops, from the heights, and again threatened Paris.
No. 189Das Kampfgebiet an der AisneThe Battleground of the Aisne
"On May 5, 1918, the battle-weary units of the 8th Division detrained at Fère-en-Tardenois, and, for the second time during the war, British troops founds themselves in the country between the Aisne and the Marne.The Division had been terribly shattered in both German offensives on the Somme in March, and at Villers Bretonneux in April, and sorely needed rest and respite. But rest behind the line was impossible owing to the shortage of men, and on the British front there were no longer quiet sectors where tired divisions could, while holding the line, regain their energy and assimilate their heavy reinforcements. Such homes of rest were only to be found on the front held by the French armies, and so it came about that at the beginning of May the IXth Corps was formed of the 8th, 21st, 25th, and 50th Divisions and, under the recently effected unity in the Allied High Command, was transferred to the 6th French Army taking over a section about 15 miles in length between Rheims and the Chemin des Dames."
The first two paragraphs of Sidney Rogerson's account of the Third Battle of the Aisne which began three weeks later, on May 27. The first two engagements in which his Division 'had been terribly shattered' were part of Operation Michael, the German Somme offensive, after which the Germans attacked on the Lys River further north in Operation Georgette in April. They returned again to the Somme sector at Villers Bretonneux after three relatively quiet weeks. The Chemin des Dames formed part of the German defensive line after the Retreat from the Marne in 1914. It was taken ultimately taken by the French in the Second Battle of the Aisne and subsequent attacks in 1917, but with losses and squandering of lives that led directly to mutinies in the French Army. The French and British would soon be driven from this high ground gained as such cost.
The Last of the Ebb: the Battle of the Aisne, 1918 by Sidney Rogerson, page 3, copyright © Sidney Rogerson, 1937, publisher: Frontline Books, publication date: 2011
1918-05-05, 1918, May, Chemin des Dames, Rheims, Reims, Winterberg, Winterburg, Chemin des Dames Winterberg map
