Meantime the troops were vaguely heard of as fighting in five different sectors along the western front, one detachment as far east as the Swiss border. Later they had spread to eight sectors, namely, near Montdidier, northwest of Château-Thierry, immediately east of Château-Thierry, at Toul, in Lorraine, and three in Alsace, one near the border line, another south of that, and one in front of Belfort.
The German spring offensive had sensibly stimulated the shipment of troops, as the figures showed. That offense had its critical stages toward the close of March, which made the help of American troops more and more urgent. General Pershing interposed with an offer to the British and French Governments to place all the American troops and facilities then in France at their disposal to help stay the German advance. The proposal deeply stirred the Anglo-French ranks—and the inactive American troops no less—and evoked grateful acknowledgments from London and Paris.
Presently American troops were heard of further afield—in Italy, for service under General Diaz against the Austrians. Tidings of their presence at a still more remote corner of the battle area came in the announcement that American marines, cooperating with British forces, had occupied a part of the Murman coast of the White Sea in European Russia.
The Stars and Stripes fluttered over Europe at far-flung points. On the western front an American army had grown up, and was rated as competent to perform the hardest work of war—to stand an intensive bombardment, to repel the assaults of massed infantry, or to launch counterattacks. Its achievements will be subsequently related; but even if they did not rank in numbers with those of the British and French, the mere presence of American soldiers at the forefront of one of the world's greatest battles stood out as a transcendent historical event. The forces of the New World had appeared to save liberty in Europe. They were there to establish a reorganization of the world on the American plan—not for the glory of the Stars and Stripes, but for a vindication of the ideas which the flag represented.
CHAPTER XLIII
RAIDING THE NEW FOE
American activities had hitherto been confined to what became known as the original American front, facing Lorraine beyond St. Mihiel. This was apparently an irregular line, in the vicinity of the Rhine-Marne canal, and fronting Nancy, Lunéville, Toul, and other towns whose existence became known by General Pershing's reports.
It was their "breaking in" ground. American troops there obtained an intimate acquaintance with modern warfare. The numerous trench raids that marked their operations apparently had no strategical relations to the movements on the battle line elsewhere, nor even disclosed any local tactical object. Americans and Germans seemed merely to be watching each other with lynx eyes, each on the alert to catch the other napping and steal a march for the glory of the achievement.
The casualties in these skirmishes were usually slight, and a few prisoners now and then would fall to one or the other side. But few raids took place without losses, which gradually became impressive as the engagements increased in frequency and scope. A trench raid is a trivial thing, with an inconsequential outcome when it has any outcome at all; but repeated daily, the casualties such raids produce, added to the fatalities resulting from random artillery fire, assume the dimensions of those of an extensive battle. They do not stand out as distinctive operations; proceeding upon established methods, there was a general sameness in their repetition, and they only became noticeable for the outstanding incidents that were bound to arise in each undertaking.
An early attack by the Germans was made behind a dense fog after daybreak, through which came a violent artillery barrage as a forerunner. The fog was of a density that blotted out everything but the nearest enemy positions. Through it enemy projectiles exploded on three sides of an American listening post just outside the wire, within forty-five feet of an enemy listening post. In a few minutes hundreds of high-explosive shells had dropped round the post and the surrounding ground, cutting off the men there. American artillery replied; but all traces of German dead and wounded were removed by the time the Americans had emerged from their dugouts after their barrage was raised.