The success was an important one, as Cléry commanded the various roads leading to Maurepas, Combles and Bouchavesnes on the north, another road on the east leading to Feuillancourt and some bridges across the Somme. The capture of the hamlet of =Omiécourt= at the other end of the bridges, two days after that of Cléry, enabled the French to connect up their positions north of the Somme with those on the left bank of the river. The Germans counter-attacked in force several times, but were unable to retake the position, in spite of very heavy losses. Cléry was completely destroyed; only a few broken walls and shattered roofs remain, and even these few traces of the formerly prosperous village are crumbling away and disappearing. A few unrecognisable fragments of ruins, standing amid an accumulation of stones and rubbish, are all that is left of the fifteenth century church. There are numerous soldiers' graves in the village, and also many military defence-works. To the east of Cléry the turbid waters of the Somme spread themselves out, forming immense marshes, intersected by a labyrinth-like network of channels. The French advance was directed from this side in 1916, while on the east they were likewise blocked by the Mont-Saint-Quentin Hill, which rises nearly 200 feet above the Somme Valley, from Cléry to Péronne, and which the Germans, by powerful defences, had converted into a second "Warlencourt Ridge." Although within sight of Péronne, scarcely three miles distant, the French could get no farther. Cléry, on the right bank of the Somme, was the nearest village to Péronne conquered by the French in 1916. [Illustration: MAUREPAS VILLAGE--COMPLETELY RAZED.] In March, 1918, no important engagements were fought on the old Somme battlefields. On March 24 the Germans crossed the Somme, south of Péronne, and forced the Tortille line north of the town. Overwhelmed and in danger of being surrounded, the British had to fall back hurriedly, under the protection of rear-guards, who were unable to check the enemy's advance. In the following month of August the valley of the Somme was cleared of the enemy almost without firing a shot. In accordance with Marshal Foch's general plan, the British attack of August 21 was limited to the north of the Somme. The Germans had just been driven back, south of the river, from the district of Montdidier to the outskirts of Roye, as a result of the Franco-British offensive of August 8. The Allied plan provided for the withdrawal of the enemy's right wing from the banks of the Ancre to Bapaume, thereby necessitating the immediate evacuation of the whole bend in the Somme by their centre, and this is what actually happened. As soon as Bapaume was invested, the Germans hastily retreated, and whereas, on August 28, the British were still hanging on to the western outskirts of Curlu, on the morning of the 29th they were in Hem, and in the evening of the same day had progressed beyond Cléry.