The personnel of this, the greatest single army that ever fought beneath the Stars and Stripes, is reproduced in the appendix. It might not be amiss to point out that an American division numbers thirty thousand men and that an American corps consists of six divisions and auxiliary troops, such as air squadrons, tank sections, and heavy artillery, which bring the strength of an American army corps to between 225,000 and 250,000 men. By the 1st of September, the United States of America had five such army corps in the field, martialling a strength of about one and one-half million bayonets. General Pershing was in command of this group of armies which comprised the First American Field Army. It was from these forces that General Pershing selected the strong units which he personally commanded in the first major operation of the First American Field Army as an independent unit in France. That operation was the beginning of the Pershing push toward the Rhine--it was the Battle of St. Mihiel. It was a great achievement. It signalised the full development of our forces from small emergency units that had reached the front less than a year before, to the now powerful group of armies, fighting under their own flag, their own generals, and their own staffs. The important material results of the Battle of St. Mihiel are most susceptible to civilian as well as military comprehension. The St. Mihiel salient had long constituted a pet threat of the enemy. The Germans called it a dagger pointed at the heart of eastern France. For three years the enemy occupying it had successfully resisted all efforts of the Allies to oust them. The salient was shaped like a triangle. The apex of the triangle--the point of the dagger--thrusting southward, rested on the town of St. Mihiel, on the river Meuse. The western flank of the triangle extended northward from St. Mihiel to points beyond Verdun. The eastern flank of the triangle extended in a northeasterly direction toward Pont-a-Mousson. It was the strongest position held by the Germans in Lorraine--if not on the entire front. The geographical formation of the salient was an invitation for the application of a pincers operation. The point of leverage of the opposing jaws of the pincers was, most naturally, the apex of the triangle at St. Mihiel. One claw of the pincers--a claw some eight miles thick, bit into the east side of the salient near Pont-a-Mousson on the west bank of the Moselle River. The other claw of the pincers was about eight miles thick and it bit into the western flank of the salient in the vicinity of the little town of Haudiomont, on the heights of the Meuse and just a little distance to the east of the Meuse River. The distance across that part of the salient through which the pincer's claws were biting was about thirty miles, and the area which would be included in the bite would be almost a hundred and seventy-five square miles. This, indeed, was a major operation.