Then followed a week's brilliant defense of the road to Amiens. Led by General Carey, this assorted force, numbering 1,500 men, plunged into the swirling battle line, where they were strung over a front of 1,200 yards, against which hordes of Germans were thrown.
"It seems almost inconceivable," wrote a correspondent, "that these defenders, brave unto death though they were, could have been able to hold that long sector, but they held. The enemy advanced in force and hurled themselves time and time again against the line in this region, but they found no weak spot. This composite force stood as gallantly and as well as their comrades to the right and to the left. They clung on for many hours until the regulars came up."
What happened at Cambrai had been repeated before Amiens. American engineers, facing an emergency, had thrown their tools aside and taken up arms. They were not many; but, nevertheless, history will never record the battle of Picardy without including the story of how Carey's men acquitted themselves, nor omit the fact that Americans were in the fray.
Afterward American troops in strong force took up positions on the active fighting front in Picardy with the French and British. General Pershing's first reenforcements occupied a sector east of Amiens on a rolling terrain. The artillery was first on the line, entering on a dark night reddened by the continuous flashes of friendly and hostile guns. Under a fire at times heavy, the American gunners took up the positions of the French batteries and set about digging in. When the infantry moved in, the firing was just as intense. In some places the troops, after passing through villages, were raked with shrapnel. In several instances they found the trenches shallow; in other cases there were no trenches at all. The positions were soon improved and the shell holes connected. The American lines generally ran about 200 to 400 yards apart with the high ground about evenly divided about them.
The American troops were there to stay. The pack on each man's back as he entered the firing line was loaded with paraphernalia that pointed to permanency so far as such a condition obtains in warfare. Each carried a blanket, with a pair of shoes tied on either side of it. Among other articles carried were two pairs of socks, a suit of underwear, a towel, soap, toilet articles, two days' emergency rations of four packages of hard bread, and a can of corned beef, whatever trinkets he had, a deck of cards, a set of dice, and photographs and letters especially cherished by him. In addition he carried canteen, rifle, bayonet, 160 rounds of ammunition, a shovel, pick, and a wire cutter (or bolo).
A French communiqué, in reporting a violent bombardment of French-American positions on April 24, 1918, specifically located the American sector as "south of the Somme and on the Avre."
The opposing lines ran north and south, with the enemy between the Americans and the rising sun. Between the rear American echelons extended the main road between Amiens and Beauvais. Amiens, the German objective, lay thirty-five kilometers away on the American left. Beauvais was about the same distance away on the American right and two hours distant by train from Paris. The Americans were between the Germans and the sea.
On April 3, 1918, this American line was violently attacked by the Germans near Villers-Bretonneux—the first occasion that brought fully equipped American troops in force into the swing of the continuing Picardy battle. It was an afternoon bombardment, beginning at 5 o'clock, and lasted for two hours. The German guns were directed especially against the Americans, who were supported on the north and south by the French. The intensity of the enemy's fire slacked about 7 o'clock, whereupon the German commander sent forward three battalions of infantry. The Americans met them and a violent struggle ensued. There was hand-to-hand fighting all along the line, as a result of which the enemy was thrust back, his dead and wounded lying on the ground in all directions. Five prisoners remained in American hands. The American losses were severe, but so were the enemy's. The French were full of praise for the manner in which the Americans acquitted themselves under trying circumstances, especially in view of the fact that they were fighting at one of the most difficult points on the battle front.
An interlude of comparative quiet set in, if such a term can be used when there were daily artillery firing and patrolling. The Americans, settling in their positions, became stronger; they appeared to be better intrenched than the Germans, who were continually harassed, day and night. The enemy was wastefully lavish in the use of gas, some of it liquefied, in glass bottles which were hurled through the air apparently by means of a spring. On bursting they liberated heavy, white fumes that caused nausea, sneezing, and coughing, but did not otherwise harm the Americans. These missiles, thrown without any detonation, were a variant on the avalanche of "mustard" gas shells the Germans periodically showered. They appeared to be disconcerted by the unmoved bearing of the Americans before the gas assaults; instead of retreating from the clouds of fumes, the Americans countered by sending gas of twofold strength into the enemy's lines. In fact, the Americans always greeted every exhibition of German fire by returning it two to one. Their positions became daily more firmly established and those of the Germans more difficult to retain.
Higher up, northwest of these positions in Picardy, American troops had established positions in union with the British forces under Sir Douglas Haig. Thus "American fronts" by the middle of May, 1918, interposed along the entire western line from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Their distribution between French and British sectors placed fresh troops where they were needed and afforded scope for invaluable training in modern warfare to both officers and men that they could obtain in no other way. Those in Picardy were not long in proving that they were equal to their experienced Anglo-French comrades in arms in the task they had set themselves.