Mouilly the 2d Colonial French Corps was in line in the centre, and
our 5th Corps, under command of Major Gen. George H. Cameron, with our
26th Division and a French division at the western base of the salient,
was to attack three difficult hills--Les Eparges, Combres, and Amaranthe.
Our 1st Corps had in reserve the 78th Division, our 4th Corps the 3d
Division, and our First Army the 35th and 91st Divisions, with the 80th
and 33d available. It should be understood that our corps organizations
are very elastic, and that we have at no time had permanent assignments
of divisions to corps.

After four hours' artillery preparation, the seven American divisions in
the front line advanced at 5 A.M. on Sept. 12, assisted by a limited
number of tanks, manned partly by Americans and partly by French. These
divisions, accompanied by groups of wire cutters and others armed with
bangalore torpedoes, went through the successive bands of barbed wire
that protected the enemy's front-line and support trenches in
irresistible waves on schedule time, breaking down all defense of an
enemy demoralized by the great volume of our artillery fire and our
sudden approach out of the fog.

Our 1st Corps advanced to Thiaucourt, while our 4th Corps curved back to
the southwest through Nonsard. The 2d Colonial French Corps made the
slight advance required of it on very difficult ground, and the 5th Corps
took its three ridges and repulsed a counter attack. A rapid march
brought reserve regiments of a division of the 5th Corps into Vigneulles
and beyond Fresnes-en-Woevre. At the cost of only 7,000 casualties,
mostly light, we had taken 16,000 prisoners and 443 guns, a great
quantity of material, released the inhabitants of many villages from
enemy domination, and established our lines in a position to threaten
Metz. This signal success of the American First Army in its first
offensive was of prime importance. The Allies found they had a
formidable army to aid them, and the enemy learned finally that he had
one to reckon with.

On the day after we had taken the St. Mihiel salient, much of our corps
and army artillery which had operated at St. Mihiel, and our divisions in
reserve at other points, were already on the move toward the area back of
the line between the Meuse River and the western edge of the Forest of
Argonne. With the exception of St. Mihiel, the old German front line
from Switzerland to the east of Rheims was still intact. In t