Five other Americans penetrated into a German dugout where twelve of the enemy were slightly wounded. The Germans resisted surrender, but our men threw grenades into the dugout, killing four of the foe. The others quickly gave themselves up.
Despite their failure, the Germans the next day continued their efforts to drive through to the American third line. An incessant artillery fire blended with gas shells prefaced two bitter attacks both of which the Americans withstood. In all, the enemy spent four days in trying to take the Apremont position.
German activities against American forces were next heard of north of St. Mihiel, where a new American sector, located on the right bank of the Meuse, south of Verdun, was disclosed. The enemy's raid had the usual characteristics. It was made by a force of 400 picked troops brought from the Russian front, who outnumbered the Americans by more than two to one. The Germans leaped from their trenches under their barrage; the Americans did likewise; and there was a hand-to-hand affray with grenade and bayonet. The upshot was a German casualty list of sixty-four dead, many wounded, and twelve prisoners, and the hurling back of the survivors to their own lines.
While these scattered local operations enlivened the various American sectors, the great German spring offensive was proceeding against the British and French well out of the established American zones. As that offensive developed in its scope, less attention was paid to the American lines east of Verdun, and save for the Seicheprey raid and the clash at Xivray, both to be presently described, the operations there were of little moment.
The usual little amenities of war went on between isolated groups of combatants, mostly local scrimmages in which not more than a dozen or twenty men participated. These took the customary form of patrol actions, clashes between scouts, the uprooting of enemy's snipers' nests and the occasional invasion of trenches by one or the other side. There were ceaseless artillery duels, accompanied by clouds of gas, and daily fatalities, not all of them due to actual warfare.
Here and there small engagements, by reason of a swinging, thoroughgoing effectiveness on the part of the bands of Americans who shared in them, stand out of the daily routine of the trench warfare. In one that took place near Bremenil, east of Lunéville, in May, 1918, when a body of Germans essayed to attack the American positions, solely to take prisoners to ascertain the American strength, not a single German got back who succeeded in entering the American trenches. A gas bombardment led the attack, followed by a heavy barrage fire, under which fifty German soldiers attempted to reach the American line; nine of the fourteen raiders were killed outright, four were captured, and one died of wounds. No American was captured.
While comparative quiet reigned in the St. Mihiel, Toul, and Lunéville sectors, as the summer advanced, a further extension of American sectors, eastward of these positions, running almost to the Swiss border, became revealed in General Pershing's reports. American forces were heard of at St. Dié, Mulhouse, Colmar, and near Belfort. With the main German forces busily—and unsuccessfully—engaged on other parts of the front, the Americans hereabout appear to pass uneventful days. The German forces before them, barring their occasional liquid fire, artillery outbreaks, air reconnoissances, and machine-gun activity, were disposed to let well enough alone.
By July, 1918, Americans practically occupied the whole of the Lorraine-Alsace front. Their positions gradually became disclosed and may now be stated with some particularity as follows: First, east of St. Mihiel; second, north of Lunéville; third, east and a little south of Lunéville or north of Badonviller; fourth, near St. Dié; fifth, just west of Gebweiler, which is just east of the battle line, and, sixth, east of Belfort, near Altkirch. Roughly speaking, these positions were about equally distant from one another and divided the entire front from St. Mihiel to the Swiss border into sections averaging about twenty-five miles each, over a front of approximately 150 miles. This became now the distinctly American front, and extended approximately one-third of the entire western front.
The United States, to all intents and purposes, had created an "Eastern front" of her own in taking over the southeastern portion of what was known as the western front. Here General Pershing's legions could drive directly into Germany by the shortest route with the least cost in men and material, and with the least delay.