It was impossible for the Germans to keep their front line supplied with ammunition or food, the carriers of which were obliged to pass through a tornado of shells and machine gun bullets while crossing the Valley of the Ailette, where their every movement could be observed by the French.  Eventually the position became untenable and the Germans retired during the night to the Northern side of the Ailette Valley.  The best elements of the Crown Prince’s army had sustained severe losses and were compelled to go to the rear to reconstitute their diminished ranks.  The evacuated territory North of the crest of Chemin des Dames included several towns that had been pulverized by bombardment, and the retreat brought the important city of Laon within range of the French guns.

The captures by the French in this sector from September 23 to November 1 included 12,000 prisoners, 200 heavy field guns, 220 trench mortars, and 720 machine guns.  In ten days, from September 21 to 30, twenty-three German airplanes were destroyed and twenty-eight forced to descend badly damaged.

THE FIRST AMERICAN CASUALTIES

The first list of Americans killed and wounded in combat with the enemy reached Washington on October 17, in an official report from Rear Admiral Sims of an encounter between a German submarine and an American destroyer.  One American sailor was killed and five sailors were wounded when the submarine torpedoed the destroyer Cassin on patrol duty in European waters.  The destroyer was not sunk and after making a gallant fight reached a British port.

Two days later Rear Admiral Sims reported that the American troop transport Antilles, homeward bound from France, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on October 17.  Seventy men of the 237 aboard lost their lives, including four naval enlisted men, sixteen army enlisted men, three ship’s officers, and 47 members of the ship’s crew.  The Antilles was under convoy of American patrol vessels at the time it was sunk.

FRENCH TRIBUTE TO U.S.  DEAD

At the burial on November 7 of the first three American soldiers killed in the trenches in France by a raiding party of Germans, a guard of French infantrymen, in their picturesque uniforms of red and horizon blue, stood on one side and a detachment of American soldiers on the other while the flag-wrapped coffins were lowered into the grave, as a bugler blew taps and the batteries nearby fired minute guns.  The French officer commanding in the sector paid an eloquent tribute to the fallen Americans, his words being punctuated by the roar of the guns and the whistle of shells.  In conclusion he said: 

“In the name of the French army and in the name of France, I bid farewell to Private Enright, Private Gresham and Private Hay of the American army.