d a French division at the western base of the salient, were
to attack three different hills--Les Eparges, Combres and Amaramthe.
Our 1st Corps had in reserve the 78th Division, our 4th Corps the 3d
Division, and our First Army the 35th and 91st Divisions, with the 80th
and 33d available. It should be understood that our corps organizations
are very elastic, and that we have at no time had permanent assignments
of divisions to corps.

After four hours' artillery preparations, the seven American divisions
in the front line advanced at 5 a.m. on September 12, assisted by a
limited number of tanks manned partly by Americans and partly by French.
These divisions, accompanied by groups of wire cutters and others armed
with bangalore torpedoes, went through the successive bands of barbed
wire that protected the enemy's front line and support trenches, in
irresistible waves on schedule time, breaking down all defense of an
enemy demoralized by the great volume of our artillery fire and our
sudden approach out of the fog.

Our 1st Corps advanced to Thiaucourt, while our 4th Corps curved back
to the southwest through Nonsard. The 2d Colonial French Corps made the
slight advance required of it on very difficult ground, and the 5th
Corps took its three ridges and repulsed a counterattack. A rapid march
brought reserve regiments of a division of the 5th Corps into Vigneulles
in the early morning, where it linked up with patrols of our 4th Corps,
closing the salient and forming a new line west of Thiaucourt to
Vigneulles and beyond Fresnes-en-Woevre. At the cost of only 7,
casualties, mostly light, we had taken 16,000 prisoners and 443 guns, a
great quantity of material, released the inhabitants of many villages
from enemy domination, and established our lines in a position to
threaten Metz. This signal success of the American First Army in its
first offensive was of prime importance. The Allies found they had a
formidable army to aid them, and the enemy learned finally that he had
one to reckon with.

MEUSE-ARGONNE OFFENSIVE, FIRST PHASE

On the day after we had taken the St. Mihiel salient, much of our corps
and army artillery which had operated at St. Mihiel, and our divisions
in reserve at other points, were already on the move toward the area
back of the line between the Meuse River and the western edge of the
forest of Argonne. With the exception of St. Mihiel, the old German
front line from Switzerland to the east of Rhei