Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1918-10-10
SUCCESSIVE BLOWS
DESTROYING MORALE
OF ENEMY FORCES

With the French Army Northeast
of Rheims, Monday. Oct. 7-CBy the
Associated Prcss)-The blows which
Marshal F'och has delivered In rapid
succession in the Champagne sector
have not only wrested from the Ger
mans most important positions which
they have held since 1914 at an ines
timab!e sacrifice of men and material.
but appears to have thrown gravest
APPREHENSION into the ranks of the
enemy. A German soldier found in
a ruined village, surrendered. tremb-
ling with fear.
What are you afraid Of" his cap
tor inquired I'VE are not going to
harm you
With the acid smell of blackened
masonry in his nostrils. with smoke
still rising from village fred by his
companions in plain sight and with
puffs Of blue smoke from German
poisonous shells marking the line of
the Suippe a little further back, the
captive replied:
But what will the French soldiers
do when they set into Germany"
His interrogation merely remarked
that it was noticeable that the Ger
man soldier who had fired a French
peasants home after taking shelter in
it for four years had no word Of SYM
pathy excepting for his own people
70 hN, NO n
and nearer with every advance the
allies were making.
With the crumbling line along the
Aisne canal, north of Rheims( and the
line along the Nesle to the east, the
Germans abandoned Noget- La Alb
besse, to the east Of Rheims and L5ri-
mont to the north. These points
have been the jailers Of Rheims for
four years. Noget- La -Abbesse had
been an observation point from which
the Germans had watched the city
and country over a wide area and di-
rected artillery fire which wrecked
villages nesting among the noun
tains of Rheims.
The Germans used to fire at the
wine growers cultivating vineyards
on the slopes and the peasant girls
gathering the grapes that grew In
spite Of the neglect enforced by the
war. Thirty of these peasant girls
came back today for the fifth var
harvest. In one OF the localities that
has been most intensely beaten by the
German shrapnel, they were working
today
The picking is meagre". one said,
but if the wine IS scarce it is all the
more precious. for this is the vint-
age OF victory"
1t was in front of thes formidable
positions that the American boys Of
the Foreign Legion fired their first
The trenches where they were sta
toned during thair first winter cam
paign, are still plainly visible in the
chalky clay.
Traces of the four years Of fighting
are found all over the ground east
Of Rheims. from Pompelle fort around
the mountain. 1t was possible dur
ing a visit today to sec what it had
cost the Germans hold the posit-
icilss tiley were HfldHy opllSeO " give
up for nothing. All the villages on
the main road from Rheims east
ward are more or less intact, for the
fighting there was at too close quar-
tiers - enable either side to use heavy
guns. They all showed traces Of re-
peated strugges from street to street
and from house to house. Every wall
Of every house or enclosure is pitted
by machine gun bullets and by shrap-
mel. Long stretches Of wire before
the trenches arc almost intact, run
ming through streets or cutting be-
tween houses TO mark the line where
the Germans were still at close grips
with the French two days ago.
Streets and roads are lacerated by
earthworks and arc in some places
upheaved by mines and impossible.