For the most part the villages lie along the
hillsides, surrounded by trees, embellished by chateaux and parks. They
are well-built and attractive, boasting churches of graceful
architecture, thanks to the lovely decorative stone taken from the
quarries in the limestone cliffs above, which are called _boves_, or
_croutes_. A fascinating, fertile country, diversified and pleasant to
the eye, before the war it might well have been taken as a sample of
rural opulence.
[Sidenote: Great difficulties of passage.]
Plateau and valleys, then, differ materially--the one monotonous and
easy of access; the other, no less charming than varied, but presenting
great difficulties of passage in the face of opposition. There is not a
village on the plateau: only a few large farms and scattered sugar-beet
refineries. In the valleys and on the slopes there are everywhere
houses, chateaux, parks, orchards, and grottoes. The slender
church-tower barely rises to the level of the plateau, as if to watch
for the approach of an enemy. The conditions then were quite simple: on
the plateau it was possible to gain many kilometres in a single rush;
but in the valleys a fierce resistance was to be expected.
[Sidenote: The Franco-American attack.]
The French and American attack in the Soissonnais was fortunate in its
starting-point. In the course of the hard-fought battles between June 15
and July 15, the French had retaken the entire valley of
Ambleny-Coeuvres, and had gained a footing on the plateau to the
eastward, which stretches as far as the outskirts of Soissons.
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