It was the first time the Germans had met the Americans in serious fighting on a scale which removed the engagement from the category of small skirmishes in local operations, and apart from the ultimate result, which was a defeat for the Germans, they learned something of the quality of Americans, both as massed and individual fighters.

North of Seicheprey an American detachment was separated into small groups and was cut off from the company to which it belonged throughout the entire fight. Behind the Americans and on their left flank were German units, but they could have retired on the right. They decided to fight, which they did notwithstanding the incessant enemy bombardment and rifle fire. Numerous hand-to-hand combats were fought in the course of this long struggle, from which the Americans found themselves obliged to retire toward nightfall, but only after destroying their machine guns.

In Seicheprey a squad of Americans found several cases of grenades, with which they made a determined fight, holding out the entire day on the northern extremity of the village. They refused to surrender when summoned to do so, and at the end of the fighting only nine out of the original twenty-three were left. A cook surprised by the Germans, and half stunned by a blow from a grenade, seized a rifle and continued firing until he fell dead.

Toward evening a hospital which had been established in Seicheprey was blown up, along with the doctors and ambulance men. The chief surgeon of the American regiment engaged hurried to the spot with French and American ambulance cars. The rescue party passed through a severe barrage fire, but eventually reached the village, where they tended to the wounded for many hours under a heavy enemy fire.

The American losses were never clearly known. They were estimated at 200. The Germans claimed 183 prisoners, which would leave only seventeen dead and wounded on the American estimate. The scope of the battle showed that the American losses in dead and wounded were much more than that, hence the number of prisoners the Germans claimed was discredited.

As to the German casualties, a German prisoner put them at 600 killed, wounded and missing, of these, more than 300 German dead were found in the American trenches and in no-man's-land. The defeat of the Germans was sufficiently proved by the omission of the German official bulletins and the German press to mention the successful counterattack.

The Xivray affair (June 16, 1918) in the Toul sector furnished another example of American alertness and vigor in an emergency. Xivray was originally behind the German lines, but they had been penetrated by the Americans, and the town was in American hands. As was the case in other engagements, German prisoners betrayed that the enemy's purpose in raiding the town was to carry off as many Americans as possible with a view to extracting information from them. The enemy's design, as thus revealed, was to send a large party without preparatory artillery fire. They were to take up a position near the American barbed wire, and send a signal rocket for a box barrage to cover Xivray and the approaching communication trenches, while heavy artillery bombarded the villages in the rear.

The American fire apparently precipitated a violent bombardment. It came at 3 o'clock in the morning and was directed at the American first line before Xivray, the American batteries, and at villages far in the rear. An Associated Press correspondent thus described what follows:

"Six hundred men advanced to the attack in no less than a dozen different columns, led by 200 picked Bavarian storming troops. They came up on the right flank, on the left, and on the center under cover of smoke, making a dark night still darker. They crept up the ravines and slipped through the hollows. The sharp ears of sentries alone prevented a total surprise.

"Their guns laid down a heavy box barrage that prevented the reenforcing of the front line. One platoon, led by Lieutenant Doan, got through the first curtain of fire. Doan even went through the second with some volunteers, but that was all the help that could be sent to the 225 men that were holding the line attacked. They were only one to three, but they fought in a way to surprise and dismay the 600 Germans.