With the acceptance of the American offer to join in the battle of Picardy, troops began to be withdrawn from the sectors thus far occupied and from the American training camps in France, and hurried as rapidly as possible to points where the French and British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. Sergeant Walsh followed his company commander to the first lines in spite of a severe barrage. The Captain being killed, he assumed command of the group and attacked a superior force of the enemy, inflicting severe loss upon them. Though of advanced age he refused to leave the front. To these recommendations General Pershing appended his approval. Lieutenant Green and Sergeants Norton and Walsh had all previously received the French War Cross, Norton and Walsh being decorated personally by Premier Clemenceau on March 3. Mr. Baker, Secretary of War, during a visit to the front-line trenches held by American troops, insisted upon going through a sap to a listening post. Peeping over the parapet into No Man's Land, he expressed his sensations in the words: "Now I am on the frontier of freedom." On the return journey from the trenches a German shell burst within less than fifty yards of Mr. Baker's motor car, hit a roadside dugout, and tore out a large crater. TOTAL CASUALTIES