the day, we had
crossed the southern lines of the convergent American attack on St.
Mihiel. Trenches and wire-fields and artillery positions had all
belonged to the French battle-zone before the Americans took them
over, and there had been fierce fighting here by the French in 1915.
But for three years the position had changed but little, till the
newly-formed First American Army undertook in September the clearing
of the Salient.

We left the car near the village of Beaumont, and walked to the brow
of the low ridge from which the American attack started. Standing
among what had been the _tranckees de depart_, with the ruins of the
village of Seichprey below us to the right, we had before us the
greater part of the American battle-field--Thiaucourt in the far
north-east; the ridge of Vigneulles, which had been the meeting-point
of the converging American attacks coming both from the north-west and
the south-east; while in the near foreground rose the once heavily
fortified Mont Sec. The American troops went over the parapet at five
o'clock on the morning of September 12th, and by the morning of the
13th their forces had met at Vigneulles, and the Salient, with its
perpetual threat to the French line, had disappeared. In three more
days the Heights of the Meuse had been cleared, and the foremost
Americans were already under the fire of the fortified zone protecting
Metz.

It was a brilliant but happily not a costly victory. Von Gallwitz, the
German Commander, had probably already determined on retirement, when
the American attack forestalled him. So that the American troops with
certain French units supporting them achieved a great result with
small losses; and as the first battle of an independent American Army
the operation must always remain one of extraordinary interest and
importance, even though, in British military opinion, the palm of
difficulty and of sacrifice must be given rather to the splendid
fighting on the Marne in June and July, when the Americans were still
under French direction, or to the admirable performance of the two
American divisions, the 27th and the 30th, serving under Sir Henry
Rawlinson, a fortnight after St. Mihiel, on the Hindenburg line. "The
original attack," at St. Mihiel, says one of the keenest of British
military observers--"was carried out with extraordinary dash by very
eager and physically magnificent soldiers." Possibly, he adds, a more
seasoned army--the American troops had