Everybody was delighted to find that in one respect the American preparations had been too extensive. No less than thirty-five hospital-trains had been assembled back of the attacking forces, and there were beds for 16,000 men in the advanced areas, with 55,000 a little farther back. As a matter of fact, less than one-tenth of these facilities proved necessary, for the American casualties were only 7,000, and many of these were slight. The German General Staff always maintained that it had anticipated the attack and that its men were under orders to retire, as the salient was of no strategic importance. The last assertion may be true, but there seems to be little to support the rest, for the total of prisoners was 16,000, with 443 guns. The quantity of material captured was enormous. In a single depot there were found 4,000 shells for 77's and 350,000 rounds of rifle cartridges. Among the other assorted booty were 200 machine-guns, 42 trench-mortars, 30 box-cars, 4 locomotives, 30,000 hand-grenades, 13 trucks, and 40 wagons. The number of German helmets which fell to the doughboys was naturally countless. The attack was so completely successful and ran so closely to schedule that there were few surprises. A little group of newspaper men, however, were frank to admit that they had encountered one. Following closely upon the heels of the attacking troops, they came to a village which was being heavily shelled by the Germans. Accordingly, the newspaper men took refuge in a dugout until such time as the opportunity for observation should be more favorable. Coming from the other direction, a group of German prisoners entered the same village. They had surrendered to one of the waves of onrushing Americans, but everybody was too busy to conduct them personally to the rear. They had merely been instructed to keep marching until they encountered some American officers or doughboys who were not otherwise engaged, and then surrender themselves. When the shells fell fast about them the Germans darted for the dugout in which the newspaper men had previously taken refuge. The correspondents were astounded and disturbed when sixteen field-gray soldiers came tumbling in upon them. They could only imagine that at some point the Germans had struck back and that the counter-attack had broken through. And the correspondents admit that without a moment's hesitation they gave one look at the Germans and then raised their weaponless hands and cried "Kamerad." The perplexing feature of the situation was that the Germans did exactly the same thing, and a complete deadlock ensued until a squad of doughboys happened along that way and took the Germans in charge.