They were so placed as to sweep with rifle and machine gun fire the approaches to the plateau up the various clefts. Lengths of barbed-wire entanglements and rabbit fencing further defended the approaches, both in the woods and across open ground. Where behind or between the lines of trenches the land rose--the top of the plateau had been worn by ages of weather into sweeping undulations--there were batteries of field guns, so arranged that they laid approaches under a cross fire. Round and in front of these knobs of land the trenches swept like ditches round bastions. Everything, in fact, that resource could suggest had been done to make the positions impregnable.[26] In addition to trenches, hamlets and villages were held by the two armies as advanced posts, and had been turned roughly into groups of block houses. FOOTNOTES: [22] A buried store of the enemy's munitions of war was also found not far from the Aisne, ten wagon-loads of live shell and two wagons of cable being dug up; and traces were discovered of large quantities of stores having been burnt, all tending to show that so far back as the Aisne the German retirement was hurried. [23] This able and distinguished officer has since been promoted for his services. [24] Part of the 5th French Army, which was operating on the right of the British from Rheims and Berry-au-Bac. [25] The reference is evidently to the fighting on Sept. 13 and 14. [26] The following descriptive notes on the German positions were made by the official "Eye-witness" with the British forces:--"Owing to the concealment afforded to the Germans' fire trenches and gun emplacements by the woods and to the fact that nearly all the bridges and roads leading to them, as well as a great part of the southern slopes, are open to their fire, the position held by them is a very strong one. Except for these patches of wood, the terrain generally is not enclosed. No boundaries between the fields exist as in England. There are ditches here and there, but no hedges, wire fences, or walls, except round the enclosures in the villages. A large proportion of the woods, however, are enclosed by high rabbit netting, which is in some places supported by iron stanchions. The top of the plateau on the south of the river to some extent resembles Salisbury Plain, except that the latter is downland while the former is cultivated, being sown with lucerne, wheat, and beetroot.