136: The German Spring Offensive’s End, or The Second Battle of the Marne

“Every time I have felt annoyed since then at France, this picture comes to mind and my anger softens.”

This is the story of the Great War’s turning point.

After a fourth and failed Spring Offensive operation, German General Erich Luddendorf is ready to make a fifth push. He’s making a pincer movement around the city of Reims, and to its west, on the banks of the Marne River, the US 3rd Division finds itself caught in a fight that the French present call worse than Verdun. It’s a slaughter, but their tenacity and unwillingness to surrender an inch of soil will earn these Yankees a new nickname: “the Rock of the Marne.”

Seizing upon this German failure, Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch is ready to launch a counteroffensive. Doughboys are once again in the worst of it, fighting to take open fields from entrenched Germans near Soissons. Their sacrifices will help turn the tide of the war, but “sacrifice” is indeed the right word as tens of thousands of these young Americans will meet their end between the Aisne and Marne Rivers.

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