"It's Americans we're looking for," answered one of the three, and shot him dead with a revolver.
It was a brief, ordinary affray, in nowise different from other happenings occurring nightly all along the front. But nineteen Americans were set upon by over 200 Germans, and it was the Americans' first taste of Teutonic warfare. They fought stoutly with pistols, knives, and bayonets until overcome, whereupon the Germans went off with an American sergeant, a corporal, and ten privates, all of whom were trapped in a dugout near the tip of the besieged salient.
The raid scarcely lasted five minutes and outside the salient no one in the American lines knew it was proceeding. The German communiqué dismissed it in three lines. From Berlin's viewpoint it was inconsequential; but to Americans it was of moment in being their first clash with the enemy. Young, inexperienced soldiers, cooped in a position they were not familiar with, encountering their baptism of fire under circumstances of surprise, uncertainty, and darkness, had acquitted themselves well against heavy odds, and prevented the enemy from penetrating beyond the first line of trenches.
The American dead were buried with due honors on French soil. The general commanding the French division in the section delivered an oration at their graves in the presence of French and American troops amid the roaring of guns and whistle of shells. His words belong to the record of America's part in the war:
"Men! These graves, first to be dug in our national soil, and but a short distance from the enemy, are as a mark of the mighty land we and our allies firmly cling to in the common task, confirming the will of the people and the army of the United States to fight with us to a finish, ready to sacrifice as long as is necessary until final victory for the most noble of causes, that of the liberty of nations, the weak as well as the mighty. Thus the deaths of these humble soldiers appear to us with extraordinary grandeur.
"We will, therefore, ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left here, left with us forever. We inscribe on the tombs, 'Here lie the first soldiers of the Republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.' The passer-by will stop and uncover his head. Travelers and men of heart will go out of their way to come here to pay their respective tributes.
"Private Enright, Private Gresham, Private Hay! In the name of France I thank you. God receive your souls. Farewell!"
After this foray shelling became of daily occurrence. The troops continued their training under fire, the first contingent giving place to the second contingent, and the second to the third in occupying the trenches, after each had undergone a spell of patrol work, sharpshooting, and accustoming their nerves to falling shrapnel. Trench conditions enabled them to acquire a better insight of the science of war than they could learn in months of instruction in training camps. While the infantry were thus engaged in their underground finishing school, the gunners, in addition to making progress in actual firing, acquired greater facility in observation work and in locating enemy batteries by the sound method. The heavy guns on both sides engaged in duels at long range, with the lighter pieces working at targets nearer the lines. This gun activity was not without its toll. German casualties due to American marksmanship, of course, could not be ascertained, but they were probably equal to the American killed and wounded.
The troops were eager for an opportunity to retaliate on the foe for trapping their comrades in the salient, and on November 14, 1917, a patrol succeeded in exacting a partial revenge. Assisted by some French troops they planned a night ambuscade near the German lines on a shell-ruined farm. It was a dreary vigil in the mud, where they lay throughout the small hours, until their patience was rewarded by the appearance of a large German patrol, in number more than double those of the Franco-Americans. They permitted the Germans to pass, and then attacked them on their flank. The fusillade of French and American bullets from shell craters and other shelters where the sharpshooters lay concealed took the Germans by surprise. They precipitately fled, taking their fallen with them. No French or American trooper was hit by the shots the Germans fired in their hurried retreat.
More notable than such skirmishes on the American front before Lorraine was the part a number of unarmed American engineers, in company with Canadians, took in the encircling movement the Germans made on the British positions before Cambrai on November 30, 1917. For some time past American engineers had not only been of yeoman service behind the French lines in hauling tons of ammunition and other equipment to supply the French forces, but had been engaged on the railroad in the rear of the British front. They did not belong to the fighting units, and no achievements were looked for from men whose sole arms were picks and shovels. But the ramifications of the German assault on Gouzeaucourt brought these workers in the rear to the forefront of the attack, and they distinguished themselves in a manner which drew tributes from both the French and British high commands. A staid official account of the rôle they played thus describes the situation: