und greatly strengthened by artificial defenses. Our First
Corps (Eighty-second, Ninetieth, Fifth, and Second Divisions), under
command of Maj. Gen. Hunter Liggett, restrung its right on
Pont-a-Mouson, with its left joining our Third Corps (the Eighty-ninth,
Forty-second, and First Divisions), under Maj. Gen. Joseph T. Dickman,
in line to Xivray, were to swing in toward Vigneulles on the pivot of
the Moselle River for the initial assault. From Xivray to Mouilly the
Second Colonial French Corps was in line in the center and our Fifth
Corps, under command of Maj. Gen. George H. Cameron, with our
Twenty-sixth Division and a French division at the western base of the
salient, were to attack three difficult hills--Les Eparges, Combres, and
Amaramthe. Our First Corps had in reserve the Seventy-eighth Division,
our Fourth Corps the Third Division, and our First Army the Thirty-fifth
and Ninety-first Divisions, with the Eightieth and Thirty-third
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.

MOVEMENT OF THE TROOPS.

After four hours' artillery preparation, 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 the 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 First Corps advanced to Thiaucourt, while our Fourth Corps curved
back to the southwest through Nonsard. The Second Colonial French Corps
made the slight advance required of it on very difficult ground, and the
Fifth Corps took its three ridges and repulsed a counter-attack. A rapid
march brought reserve regiments of a division of the Fifth Corps into
Vigneulles in the early morning, where it linked up with patrols of our
Fourth Corps, closing the salient and forming a new line west of
Thiaucourt to Vigneulles and beyond Fresnes-en-Woevre. At the cost of
only 7,000 casualties, mostly light, we had taken 16,000 prisoners and
443 guns, a great quantity of material, released the inhabitants of many
villages from en