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To complete the process begun on the south, the advance in the north was now resumed; and on 14 October Belgian forces with a French army under Dégoutte and the British Second Army under Plumer attacked the whole front in Flanders between Dixmude and the Lys at Comines.
Concealed by the forests of Compiègne and Villers-Cotterets, he had assembled in the angle between the Oise and Marne reserves of which the Germans denied the existence. From the Aisne near Fontenoy southwards to the Ourcq Mangin commanded an army containing the pick of French colonial troops; and thence to the Marne Degoutte had another which included five American divisions.
Division General Degoutte, Commanding Sixth Army. On July 18 the marines were again called into action in the vicinity of Soissons, near Tigny and Vierzy.
The German armies had to a large extent beaten themselves out against the British defensive battle of the spring: and while the Americans were making their splendid spurt from April to August, and entering the fighting field in force for the first time, the British Army, having absorbed its recruits, taken huge toll of its enemies, and profited by all there was to be learnt from the German offensive, was getting ready every day to give the final strokes in the war, aided, when the moment came, by the supreme leadership of Marshal Foch, by the successes of Generals Mangin and Dégoutte on the Marne, by the masterly campaign of General Gouraud in Champagne, and the gallant push of General Pershing in the Argonne.
But we were all too soon on the road again for Meaux and Paris, passing slowly through the ruined streets of Vaux, with Bouresches and Belleau Wood to our right, and behind us the great main road from Soissons to Chateau Thierry, for the command of which in its northern sector, the American divisions under General Mangin, and in its southern portion those commanded by General Dégoutte, had fought so stoutly last July.
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