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"Somme-Py and the country round has a special meaning for us folk in Trier. For here our Trier regiments above all the 29th and 69th have fought with splendid valour, and here they have buried many a dear friend and comrade. Immediately before Somme-Py one of the largest mass-graves of the whole campaign may be seen.
Gouraud's progress was less rapid but better sustained. His greatest advance was only three miles, but it extended along a wider front and developed during the following days, while the Americans were held up by defective organization. Somme-Py and Manre were taken on the 28th, while on Gouraud's left Berthelot began to move from Reims, and farther west Mangin pursued the Germans across the Aisne.
The aviation camp at Coucu-le-Château, north of Soissons, and the station at Comines, Belgium, were under fire from the air. In Champagne a quantity of shells were unloosed upon the station at Somme-Py and Dontrein, near Eacille and St. Etienne-sur-Suippe enemy bivouacs were bombarded. Other bivouacs at Basancourt and Pont Faverger were struck by arrows dropped from the skies.
Squadrons of white clouds drift down the valley, as if to cover the sleeping heroes with a shroud of white. Above Sedan's heights appears the shining crescent of the moon and sheds a ghostly light over the wide field of death the battlefield of Sedan." "At last we arrive at our destination Somme-Py. But what a sight! Nothing remains of the once beautiful, spacious village but a heap of rubbish.
Close by are all the places famous through years of fighting Souain, Navarin Farm, Tahure, the Butte de Tahure, and, to the north-west, Somme-Py, Ste. Marie-Py, and so on to Moronvilliers and Craonne.
They succeeded, though, in penetrating a small salient of the French line between the road from Navarin and that of the St. Souplet. They also captured, on the 12th, some sections of advanced trenches between Tahure and Somme-Py, gaining more than 700 yards of front. In the Vosges a similar series of local engagements occupied the combatants.
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