The losses were the heaviest sustained by Americans since they began active warfare in France. In a dispatch to the War Department General Pershing indicated that the losses among his men were between 200 and 300. According to the German official statement 183 Americans were taken prisoner, so that the American casualties apparently came mostly under the heading of captured. Official reports of the German losses, according to a prisoner captured later, gave 600 killed, wounded, and missing. IN THE PICARDY BATTLE "Franco-American positions south of the Somme and on the Avre" were officially mentioned for the first time in the French War Office report of April 24, indicating that forces of the United States were there on the battlefront resisting the great German offensive. The report stated that an intense bombardment of the positions all along this front was followed by an attack directed against Hangard-en-Santerre, the region of Hailles, and Senecat Wood. The Germans were repulsed almost everywhere. Formal announcement that American troops sent to reinforce the allied armies had taken part in the fighting was made by the War Department in its weekly review of the situation issued on April 29. "Our own forces," the statement read, "have taken part in the battle. American units are in the area east of Amiens. During the engagements which have raged in this area they have acquitted themselves well." UNDER INTENSE FIRE Another heavy attack was launched by the Germans against the Americans in the vicinity of Villers-Bretonneux on April 30. It was repulsed with heavy losses for the enemy. The German bombardment opened at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and was directed especially against the Americans, who were supported on the north and south by the French. The fire was intense, and at the end of two hours the German commander sent forward three battalions of infantry. There was hand-to-hand fighting all along the line, as a result of which the enemy was thrust back, his dead and wounded lying on the ground in all directions. The French troops were full of praise for the manner in which the Americans conducted themselves under trying circumstances, especially in view of the fact that they are fighting at one of the most difficult points on the battlefront. The American losses were rather severe. The gallantry of the 300 American engineers who were caught in the opening of the German offensive on March 21 was the subject of a dispatch from General Pershing made public by the War Department on April 19. The engineers were among the forces hastily gathered by Major Gen. Sanderson Carey, the British commander, who stopped the gap in the line when General Gough's army was driven back. [See diagram on Page 389.] During the period of thirteen days covered by General Pershing's report, the engineers were almost continuously in action. They were in the very thick of the hardest days of the great German drive in Picardy.