American engineers also took part in the battle, particularly during the first days of the German offensive. Three companies belonging to two regiments of the American Railway Engineers were reported in the German War Office statement as operating in the areas of Chauny and the Crozat Canal. This statement was confirmed in a report from General Pershing to the Acting Chief of Staff at Washington. The Americans had been working in the rear lines with Canadian engineers, under Canadian command. When the German attack came, they threw down their tools and seized the weapons with which they had been armed for some months, and formed themselves into a fighting unit. The Germans came on, and finally reached the positions where the Americans were waiting. The number of the engineers was comparatively small. They had no intention of retreating, however, and were bent upon killing all the Germans possible.

As the first enemy wave advanced, the American forces let them come until they were within certain range: then opened fire, pouring in a storm of bullets. Gaps appeared in the advancing lines at many places, but the German waves came on, without firing a single shot. The Americans were unable to understand these tactics. By this time their weapons were so hot that they could not be used effectively, and the enemy was close, so that the engineers retired, fighting, took up another position, then turned and began operations again. A British officer who witnessed the engagement is reported to have said: "They held on by their teeth until the last moment, inflicting terrific casualties on the enemy. Then they moved back and waited for the Germans, and repeated the performance." By the time the engineers reached a place somewhere near Noyon they were nearly exhausted and almost without equipment. There they had a chance to rest and re-equip.

On the sectors where American troops had been stationed before the decision to place them at the disposal of General Foch intensive training operations in the front-line trenches, with artillery fire and raiding of the enemy's positions, had been proceeding along much the same lines as during the previous month. A dispatch dated April 3 reported that American troops on a certain sector other than that in the region of Toul had been subjected to an extraordinarily heavy gas attack.

With the acceptance of the American offer to join in the battle of Picardy, troops began to be withdrawn from the sectors thus far occupied and from the American training camps in France, and hurried as rapidly as possible to points where the French and British required reinforcements.

Casualty lists showed that the Rainbow Division, (composed of troops from nearly every State in the Union,) the first of the National Guard divisions to cross the Atlantic, had been engaged in the fighting. The 150th Machine Gun Battalion, made up of guardsmen from the old 2d Wisconsin Infantry, had suffered heavily; of the sixty-eight men named as severely wounded in one list fifty-six were identified as members of the Wisconsin machine-gun unit.

AMERICAN WAR CROSSES

General Pershing approved, according to an announcement on March 19, the awarding of the first American military crosses for extraordinary heroism. The recipients were Lieutenant John O. Green, Sergeant William Norton, and Sergeant Patrick Walsh. The crosses were awarded for "extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy." The exploits of these men were described by the General commanding their division as follows:

I recommend that the Distinguished Service Cross be awarded to the officer and men named hereafter, who distinguished themselves by acts of extraordinary heroism.

Lieutenant Green, while in a dugout, having been wounded by an enemy hand grenade, was summoned to surrender. He refused to do so. Returning the fire of the enemy, he wounded one and pursued the hostile party.

Sergeant Norton, finding himself in a dugout surrounded by the enemy, into which a grenade had just been thrown, refused to surrender, and made a bold dash outside, killing one of his assailants. By so doing he saved the company's log book.