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Nivelle, the new commander-in-chief, had conceived an ambitious plan of crushing the Germans on a front of fifty miles between the plateau north-east of Soissons and the river Suippe in Champagne; and this offensive, coupled with the British pressure in front of Arras, was to clear the Germans out of the greater part of occupied France.

There was a lull on the 16th, and on the 17th Maunoury recovered the quarries of Autrèches; but east of Reims the 9th Army had fallen back from the Suippe, and the Prussian Guard had captured Nogent l'Abbesse and was threatening Foch's connexion with Langle in Champagne.

The American front ran for seventeen miles from Forges on the Meuse, eight miles north of Verdun, to the centre of the Argonne, whence the French extended it to Auberive on the Suippe. Pershing's First Army advanced an average depth of seven miles and captured Varennes, Montfaucon, for long the Crown Prince's headquarters, Nantillois, and Dannevoux.

It seemed as if the cheerless waste would never end; all that they met was a flock of very lean sheep, guarded by a big black dog. It was about four o'clock when at last the 106th halted for the night at Dontrien, a small village on the banks of the Suippe.

That commander, who knew how to use cavalry, ordered a regiment at the gallop to occupy the village of Auberive, on the Suippe, and there harry the advancing column sufficiently to give him time to bring up the light artillery and to bring into action a large body of infantry encamped at Jouchery, five miles away. Before six o'clock, the cavalry were in Auberive. The men worked like fiends.

The officers said that all the four corps would bivouac that evening on the line of the Suippe between Auberive and Hentregiville, occupying the intervening villages of Dontrien, Betheniville and Pont-Faverger, making a line of battle nearly five leagues long.

Progress along the whole French front continued in October; Gouraud's right pressed on to a level with, and then in advance of, the American left towards Challerange and Grandpré; his centre advanced towards Machault, and on his left Berthelot took Loivre, Brimont, and forced the passages of the Suippe at Bertricourt and Bazancourt, and of the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac.

Their right flank was covered by the powerful defenses of the Aisne and the guns of the Craonne plateau, their left flank was a series of intrenchments along the river Suippe, which merged into the second line of defense of the main army under the Duke of Württemberg.

The line extends from a point north of Verdun, on the heights of the Meuse, across the wooded country of the Argonne and the plain of Champagne to Rheims, thence northwest to Brimont, crossing the Aisne near its confluence with the Suippe, and from thence proceeding to Craonne, whence it takes a westerly course along the heights of the Aisne to the Forest of the Eagle, north of Compiègne.

About nine o'clock the regiment left the Chalons road and wheeled to the left into another that led to Suippe, which, like the first, extended, straight as an arrow's flight, far as the eye could see.