Wall plaques commemorating the First and Second Battles of the Marne from the Dormans Chapel and Memorial, Dormans, France. © 2014 by John M. Shea
"'The big attack we'd been told about has begun . . . The sky is on fire. The ground shakes. The officers are quiet in their mess this evening. One tinkles on the piano. The others go to bed early. Nothing suggests success.'The Germans finally evacuated the village. After spending several sleepless nights in the cellar, shells bursting all around them, Hue and his family almost missed the actual moment of liberation during the night of 24/25 July. And when a French soldier arrived at their door they at first took him for a spy. But no — 'We really had been liberated! I'd hidden all our flags in the attic beneath the roof. I've brought them down. To-morrow we'll decorate all our windows.'"
Excerpt from Ian Sumner's They Shall Not Pass in which he quotes Alfred Hue, Mayor of Beuvardes, a village north of Château-Thierry. His house had been occupied by German officers and he and his family lived in the cellar. Earlier in the month, the Mayor had heard from French and American prisoners that the Allied attack, the Second Battle of the Marne, had begun.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, page 200, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
1918-07-24, 1918-07-25, 1918, July, liberation, Second Battle of the Marne
