"We actually took over four hundred prisoners between the railroad and the river--the 6th German Grenadier Regiment was annihilated...." And the Germans never reached the Surmelin valley, or that Montmirail road on which they had set their hearts.

"The deciding factor," says Colonel Palmer, "was the unflinching courage of our men, and their aggressive spirit." And the action, small as were the numbers engaged, could not have been bettered.

"It is a military classic." Over this hard-fought ground, consecrated by the graves of men who had thus bravely--thus gaily--laid down their lives for a cause of which they had no doubt, we ran on to Chateau Thierry, and that western flank of the Marne salient, where in June, while the Germans were still pressing south, and in July when Foch turned upon his trapped foe, the Americans, most of whom were for the first time in real battle, bore themselves to the astonishment and admiration of all the watching Allies.

In June especially, when matters were at their worst.
The capture of Bouresches, and Belleau Wood, the capture of Vaux on July 1st, the gallant help which an American machine-gun battalion gave the French in covering the French retreat across the bridge at Chateau Thierry, before it was blown up, and foiling the German attempts to cross, and the German move towards Paris, were perhaps, writes a British military authority, "the most splendid service, from a military standpoint, the Americans rendered to the Allied Cause.

It was certainly the first occasion on which they really made themselves felt, and brought home to the Germans the quality of the opposition they were likely to encounter from the American Armies." As we approached Chateau Thierry, the fog had cleared away and the night was not dark.