United States forces abroad were obliged for a long time to depend upon guns of French make, and even when the war came to an end, the proportion of American-made artillery in France was very small.

During the autumn and winter of 1917 minor trench operations were conducted by General Pershing's men along that section of the front lying south of Verdun, and known as the Toul sector, because it was based on the French city of Toul. Gradually this entire sector was taken over by American troops, who began to learn the secrets of trench warfare from actual experience. The process, however, was exceedingly slow. It was well known that in open fighting the American soldier was the equal of any fighting-man in the world, but in trench work he was at a great disadvantage. It remained for Germany in the final year of the war to commit another of her fatal blunders. Instead of holding her fortified lines in Belgium and France and defying the Allies to drive her from them, she deliberately advanced and gave battle in the open, thus at once bringing into the conflict hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who had had no experience in trench warfare whatever, and in such warfare would have been of little immediate use against her.

As the troops from America landed, they were sent at once to training-camps far behind the battle-front, and here their instruction began, under

the direction of French and English veterans. While these fighting-units were in training, other detachments were engaged in the construction work made necessary by the coming armies. Lumbermen from the South and the West found themselves operating sawmills in the French forests in the Vosges Mountains, and elsewhere. Engineers prominent in the civil life of America were to be seen building roads, bridges, railways, camps, docks, and storage depots of every sort. Famous doctors and surgeons gave their skill in providing for the sanitary welfare of the coming armies. Organizations such as the Red Cross, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army sent their representatives abroad to provide for the comfort and wellbeing of the troops. Many thousands of skilled mechanics, disdaining the high wages which were being paid to such men at home, gave their services to the government at a soldier's pay in order to go abroad and do their part in the great work of construction behind the lines. Among both these men and the combat units were to be found many negroes, who proved their bravery and devotion to the country not alone in work behind the lines but equally so at the front, where their courage in attack, especially with the bayonet, attracted wide-spread attention.

The organization of the United States Army abroad differed somewhat from that of the armies

of the Allies. In order to understand fully the operations in which the Americans took part during the year 1918, the details of this organization should be grasped.

The American "division" as it is called, was much larger than the divisions of the European armies, and comprised in all some 28,000 men. Of these men, there were four regiments, consisting of three battalions each, or twelve in all, in the first line. Each battalion consisted of four companies of 250 men each, or 1000 men to the battalion. The first line infantrymen numbered therefore 12,000 men. There were also a regiment of engineers, a machine-gun battalion, a brigade of artillery consisting of three regiments, and a signalcorps battalion, a trench-mortar battery, and the necessary transport, medical, and police units. Taking the division as a unit, six were required to make up an army corps, namely, four combat divisions, one depot division, one replacement division, and two regiments of cavalry. Three to five of these army corps constituted an army. It will thus be seen that an army corps embraced 168,000 men, and an army, from 500,000 to 840,000 men. Two American armies were in operation when the war came to a close, and a third was in process of formation.

No victories on the field of battle were won by the American Expeditionary Forces abroad during the year 1917, but in war the greatest victories

are not always won on the field of battle. The thousands of young Americans who landed in France daily were creating a menace to the power of the kaiser which neither he nor his generals could afford to ignore. Their sneers were for the consumption of the people at home; they themselves knew that when the American forces reached their maximum strength German imperialism was doomed, and hence they made frantic efforts to gain a decision before that strength was reached.

CHAPTER XXV

THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1918

HE year 1918 began very quietly, from a mil

itary standpoint, yet it was merely the quiet before the storm. Preparations for the great German offensive went on with feverish activity. The German leaders hoped to obtain a military decision of some sort during the year, upon which a negotiated peace might be based. Yet there was growing throughout the world a feeling of opposition to the German plans which rendered victory for the kaiser impossible. The British, French, Italians, and Americans, while Germany's principal opponents, were by no means her only ones. Portuguese troops held a sector of the front in France. Brazil and Cuba had entered the lists and were preparing expeditions. China, at war with Germany, proposed to send troops to the front, while hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers were at work behind the lines in France. Polish regiments, recruited on both sides of the water, went to the front under their own flag. From every part of the world men came to assist in bringing about the defeat of Germany. was recognized everywhere that, no matter what

It