While the Franco-American armies thus attacked the enemy salient on
the west, the Franco-Italian forces under General Berthelot on the eastern side of the salient between Reims and the Marna began to counter-attack General von Below's army, before which they had slowly fallen back for three days. The wooded hit ?s of this part of Champagne are difficult fighting ground and the enemy was in great force. Nevertheless the Allies made headway. The Italians, after six days of hard fighting in the Ardre Valley, were relieved last Saturday by British troops, who went straight into action and captured two villages. By Tuesday th British and French troops in this sector had almost regained the ground lost on the 15th, and were occupying very large bodies of the enemy, whose object was to retain command of the Dormans-Fismes road by which he must retreat. The position of the enemy's masses, packed into a narrowing salient of rough country leas than twenty- four miles square with poor communications, and harassed on three sides and from the air, is not enviable.
