On June 13, 1918, the Germans gathered strong forces, between 30,000 and 40,000 men, and attacked the line from Courcelles to Mery. As a result, they were heavily punished and after eight hours of costly efforts were forced back, their ranks shattered and in an exhausted condition. The fifth day of the fighting marked a definite check of enemy operations. The Allies were well content since the Germans had paid such an enormous cost for the ground they had gained. The five-days' battle west of the Oise had ended for the Germans in a costly reverse after they had made an advance varying from two to six miles. [Illustration: The German thrust south of Ypres and where it was stopped.] This last offensive showed that the Germans had not been able to maintain the driving power that characterized their first onrush. In their drive on Amiens, which lasted for ten days, the Allies lost a tract of territory forty miles deep, and their casualties were heavy. The German attack in the north was of about the same duration, but their gains were much less. After the conquest of the Chemin-des-Dames the crown prince's forces had pushed on to the Marne, twenty-five miles distant, but here they had been unable to carry out any successful operations. In studying the situation the Germans' gain in territory was not of first importance. They had failed to attain their object, which was to divide the French and British army and then destroy one of them, and their attempt in a series of converging operations to crush both Allies was also a failure. [Illustration: Where Foch definitely stopped the German offensive, June 14, 1918.] The German offensive for the time being was now definitely checked, and no important operations were undertaken. Trench raids and bombardments were of daily and nightly occurrence, but along the fighting front it was "a quiet period" in a military sense. During the night of June 14-15, 1918, British and Scottish troops by a swift stroke attacked German outpost lines on a front of about two miles and won a long strip of ground, with 200 prisoners and about 25 machine guns. The scene of this interesting operation was before Hinges, and the Allies had a special grudge against the Germans occupying the posts in this neighborhood, for some of them belonged to the Eighteenth German Division of infamous memory; the first German division to enter Belgium at the beginning of the war, and active participants in the reign of terror at Louvain and Termonde. This division had been fighting ever since they were shooting civilians in Belgium, and there were probably few left of Von Kluck's original forces, for they had been marked out for special attention by the British and French.