lery, although they must
perforce lose or destroy great quantities of ammunition. Against the
retreating foe fresh American divisions were hurled. On the 25th of July
the Forty-second division relieved the Twenty-sixth, advancing toward the
Vesle, with elements of the Twenty-eighth, until relieved on August 3d,
by the Fourth Division. Farther east the Thirty-second had relieved the
Third. The Americans had to face withering fire from machine-gun nests
and fight hand to hand in the crumbled streets of the Champagne villages.
Here were carried on some of the fiercest conflicts of American military
history. Finally on the 6th of August the Germans reached the line of the
Vesle, their retreat secured, although their losses had been terrific.
But the pause was only momentary. Before they could bring up
replacements, the British launched their great drive south of the Somme,
the American Twenty-eighth, Thirty-second, and Seventy-seventh divisions
crossed the Vesle pushing the Germans before them, and there began what
Ludendorff in his memoirs calls "the last phase."

Pershing had not lost sight of his original object, which was to assemble
the American divisions into a separate army. After the victories of July,
which wiped out the Marne salient, and those of August, which put the
enemy definitely on the defensive, he felt that "the emergency which had
justified the dispersion of our divisions had passed." Soon after the
successful British attack, south of Amiens, he overcame the objections of
Foch and concluded arrangements for the organization of this army, which
was to operate in the Lorraine sector.[12] It contained 600,000 men,
fourteen American divisions and two French. On the 30th of August the
sector was established and preparations made for the offensive, the first
step in which was to be the wiping out of the St. Mihiel salient. This
salient had existed since 1914, when the Germans, failing to storm the
scarp protecting Verdun on the east, had driven a wedge across the lower
heights to the south. The elimination of this wedge would have great
moral effect; it would free the Paris-Nancy railway from artillery fire;
and would assure Pershing an excellent base for attack against the
Metz-Sedan railway system and the Briey iron basin. The German positions
were naturally strong and had withstood violent French attacks in 1915.
But there was only one effective line of retreat and the enemy, if he
persisted in holding the a