blue coat and red breeches, such as he wore in America. As the American soldiers passed in review, they wore full fighting equipment, including trench-caps, and gas-masks dangling at their belts. Joffre and Pershing afterward took luncheon some thirty miles from the reviewing ground in the mess-hall of the accredited American correspondents. French and American bands alternated outside in playing. Beneath rolling storm clouds, a French airplane kept its vigil overhead, and special guards of French and American soldiers were gathered about the place. Our soldiers under Pershing, on arrival in France, did not at once go to the front, but to training-camps, the most of which were in Eastern France, north of Toul and south of Verdun. Here they were in training for several months, after which they went to the front in comparatively small detachments, serving under the French mainly, but a few under the British. Gradually they came to have experience in skirmishes north of Toul, the most notable of which was at a place named Seicheprey. The first battles in which something really notable was achieved by our men were those at and near ChâteauThierry, at the end of May and early in June, and the one at Cantigny about the same time. Meanwhile the Twentyseventh Division, composed of New York State Militiamen, had been sent to the British front, back of Armentières, where with several small engagements they took part in the later defense of Kemmel Hill, and cooperated with the Thirtieth Division, as well as with Australian and British troops, in one of the notable successes in which Americans took part either at this time or afterward. This was the fight at the St. Quentin Canal and its tunnel, which resulted in the breaking of the. Hindenburg line at its strongest point, late in September. In three other features of Foch's victories Americans were to have conspicuous parts. The first was the holding up of the German advance across the Marne, in May and June, foreshadowing the victory of July 18, followed by a continuous battle of two or three weeks, in which Ludendorff was finally forced to retreat beyond the Vesle. Another achievement, and the first of which Americans were in sole command, was the elimination of the St. Mihiel salient, which was begun on September 12 and soon became a complete and easy victory. The last considerable achievement of the Americans was the Meuse-Argonne operation, where they fought until the end of the war on the eastern side of the forest, in cooperation with the French, who were on the western side, the two armies at the time of the armistice having reached Sedan and taken the city.10 10 Principal Sources: The compiler's final chapter in "Balfour, Viviani and Joffre," supplemented by Associated Press dispatches, and General Pershing's report to the War Department made at the close of the war. GERMAN DRESS HELMETS INTENDED FOR USE IN A These helmets are a part of a collection said to have numbered 60,000 that were found in Rhenish Prussia by the American Army of Occupation, in 1918, some of which were sent to this country and employed as exhibits to stimulate subscriptions to the Victory Loan of May, 1919 AUSTRALIANS PREPARING FOR MESSINES RIDGE These soldiers are studying a great model of the terrain to be taken, the model "true in every detail" and covering more than an acre of ground I MESSINES RIDGE June 7, 1917-July 28, 1917 OR twelve months the front between the sea and the FOR Lys River had been all but stagnant, after having been for the first two years of the war the chief fighting area of the British. In the half-moon of hills around Ypres, and the ridges of Wytschaete and Messines, the Germans had viewpoints which commanded the whole countryside, and especially the British line within the salient, so that any British preparations for attack would be under German eyes. Moreover, the heavy, water-logged clay where the British front was maintained lay at the mercy of weather, and in rain became a bottomless swamp. The Germans were acutely conscious of the importance of the terrain, and there was little chance of taking them by surprize. But now in June war flared up again in this region with all its old-time fury. David Lloyd George arose at 3 o'clock on the morring of June 7, and sat down by an open window in his residence at Halton Heath, England, waiting for an explosion. Presently from across 130 miles of land and water he heard distant thunder, and then knew that a million pounds of explosives had hurled skyward German first-line trenches on the France-Flanders border, and that British soldiers were charging forward toward the crest of the MessinesWytschaete ridge. Plans for the explosion of this great mine had been long maturing, and Lloyd George had been. apprized of the exact moment when it would be set off. When he went to bed the night before, he had left instructions that he should be called at 3 o'clock, in the hope of hearing the crash that was to herald the renewal of a British offensive. Some idea of the magnitude of the explosion may be obtained by comparing it to a series of such blasts as shook New York City when the Black Tom disaster |