2,000,000 in November. Two thirds of them were to see active service in the front line before the armistice, while twenty-nine of the divisions engaged in combat. The quality of the American troops, despised by Germany in their turn as "Kitchener's contemptibles" had been, was a matter of uneasiness in the Supreme War Council. The American army was composed of physically fit young men, with little military The men themselves were drawn Quality of troops training before the war. directly from their civil occupations, whether they entered the service through the regular army, the National Guard, or the draft. Of 200,000 commissioned officers, who trained them, less than 10,000 were in the service when war was declared; of this five per cent, upon whose training and initiative the fate of the army depended, only 5791 were professional officers in the regular army, and more than half of these were young men fresh from their studies at West Point, with little more than the age and maturity of a college senior. There were not over 3000 officers of reasonable maturity to assemble, train, and operate the army, and until the earliest division had met the enemy there was a question as to the success of the American experiment in war. The Yankee Division, stationed in line on the south side of the Saint-Mihiel salient near the village of Seicheprey, took part in the first engagement that could be called a battle. Its trenches were raided by the Germans on April 20, 1918, and were retaken by American troops on the following day. drives The German armies retained the choice of time and place for the first four months of the battle of 1918. ReGerman enforced by divisions from the Russian front, Ludendorff and Hindenburg used all their resources to force a victory. The first phase of the offensive, in the valley of the Somme, continued for two weeks after March 21 until the German line was stabilized near Amiens and Montdidier. On April 9 the thrust was shifted in a new direction, this time in the valley of the Lys, from the direction of Lille and Armentières toward the shoulder in the British line at Ypres and the great supply stations around Hazebrouck. Here again the line swayed, but held. On May 27 the Germans felt for a third time for a soft spot on the Allied front, and this time struck at the Chemin des Dames, north of the Aisne River, between the towns of Soissons and Rheims, and again bent the Allied line and stretched it to the breaking point. The American divisions, brigaded with the English and French armies, and growing more numerous every month, Staff supervision from March till May. To the 1st Division, stationed south of Amiens near Montdidier, came the earliest opportunity for an engagement arranged and executed by its own officers. The success of the training of divisional staffs was as much a question as that of the field effectiveness of the troops. From G.H.Q. at Chaumont relentless supervision was maintained over officers entrusted with command. Inspectors with the black braid of the General Staff descended anywhere at any moment. The giant limousine with four stars on its windshield was liable to appear with General Pershing himself without warning, and the lack of officers of proved experience was somewhat made up by the summary removal of officers of whatever rank who appeared to waver in a crisis. The returning troop transports soon began to bring to the United States officers from division commanders down, for whom Pershing had no use, while the officers who remained on duty never escaped the spur of staff pressure. saw a routine service all along the battered front On May 28 the 1st Division, commanded by Hunter Liggett, took the village of Cantigny, near Montdidier. With neatness and dispatch the plan of operaCantigny tions worked out to a complete success, and the growing suspicion that the raw material of the American troops was good enough to atone for under-preparation was confirmed. From every corner of the front there came demands to Foch for more of the American divisions, whose vigor and enthusiasm wherever they appeared brought stimulation to the tired divisions on the French and Brit ish sectors. War was an old story to troops that had been in it through four campaigns, and needed the crusading spirit of the American divisions; while the repute the Ist Division gained at Cantigny came just in time. The third phase of the German offensive, beginning the day before, swept away resistance along the Chemin des Dames, pushed across the Aisne, and then the Vesle, and drove everything before it along a front of thirty miles or more, as it advanced southward between Soissons and Rheims toward the Marne at Château-Thierry and the road to Paris. From the first hours of the new advance the critical nature of the emergency was clear. The scene itself was a surprise, and the first divisions dislodged by the ChâteauGermans on the Chemin des Dames were British Thierry troops who had been sent there for rest. The fortifications around Rheims could not be reduced by the invader, but those at Soissons yielded a little, and between the two shoulders thus created, the apex of the salient forced itself to the south. Every available American division was brought up by motor train to support the French. On the afternoon of the fifth day of the advance, May 31, a battalion of motorized machine-gunners belonging to the 3d American Division came up from the south, crossed the Marne on the bridge at Château-Thierry, and pushed through that city to its northern rim against the stream of refugees and retreating troops. Here it took its station and helped to hold back the advance of German troops until the French forces had been brought across the Marne. The next day it withdrew itself to the southern bank and stuck there until the rest of the 3d Division came up behind it, and the 2d Division took station on its left. "The American gunners," wrote a French correspondent who saw them there, "are handsome chaps, with long, muscular legs and supple movements, in whom a certain seeming nonchalance follows concise action which goes directly to the point." The German tide slacked at Château-Thierry with a raw American division standing between it and Paris. The 2d Division, under Bundy, instead of going into training camp was sent to position along the Paris-Vaux road, where its first units came to rest on June 1. There was no line left to be taken over. Between their outposts and the advancing Germans there was nothing but a procession of French troops in full retreat. By Sunday morning, June 2, parts of the 2d Division, including a brigade of marines, had chosen their own line and were dug in. Late that afternoon the German columns in full pursuit were broken by American fire at Hill 165. Four days later the 2d Division took the offensive to clean the German machine-gunners out of the hill pockets and brush concealments of Belleau Wood. In the next four weeks the margins of the Marne salient were consolidated as Foch awaited a renewal of the German drive. The second Marne battle At daybreak on July 15 the German offensive opened up once more upon a long front from Château-Thierry to Rheims and beyond Rheims to the edge of the forest of the Argonne. The strategic situation. of Rheims and the importance of the railway lines behind it made it important to remove this obstruction at once. There were now new American divisions awaiting behind the line, but the 3d Division at the extreme left of the assailed area held its own at Château-Thierry, under General Dickman, when the Germans advanced again. Eight divisions in all played their part in this engagement: the Ist, 2d, 3d, and 4th, 26th, 28th (Iron Division, of Pennsylvania troops), 93d (colored), and the 42d. Foch's coun The German General Staff knew in its heart that this was its last offensive. Following the defensive scheme of Pétain, Foch yielded a little to take up the shock ter-attack of the impact, and on July 18 countered with his left between Soissons and the Marne. The German success had thrust a sharp salient with three sides exposed south of the Aisne. Foch, who had devoted the first weeks of his supreme command to taking an inventory of his strength and to meeting immediate emergencies as they appeared, was watching for his opportunity to endanger the salient by striking near its base, and to take the aggres |