the western base of
the salient, were to attack three difficult hills--Les Eparges, Combres,
and Amaramthe. Our First Corps had in reserve the Seventy-eighth
Division, our Fourth Corps the Third Division, and our First Army the
Thirty-fifth and Ninety-first Divisions, with the Eightieth and
Thirty-third 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 September 12th, assisted by a
limited number of tanks manned partly by Americans and partly by the
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 First Corps advanced to Thiaucourt, while our Fourth Corps curved
back to the southwest through Nonsard. The Second Colonial French Corps
made the slight advance required of it on very difficult ground, and the
Fifth Corps took its three ridges and repulsed a counter-attack. A rapid
march brought reserve regiments of a division of the Fifth Corps into
Vigneulles in the early morning, where it linked up with patrols of our
Fourth Corps, closing the salient and forming a new line west of
Thiaucourt to 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.

MEUSE-ARGONNE OFFENSIVE, FIRST PHASE

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