THE Lunéville sector was merely a sort of postgraduate school of warfare, but shortly after the beginning of 1918 the American Army took over a part of the line for its very own. This sector was gradually enlarged. By the middle of April the Americans were holding more than twenty miles. The sector lay due north of Toul and extended very roughly from Saint-Mihiel to Pont-à-Mousson. Later other sections of front were given over to the Americans at various points on the Allied line. Perhaps there was not quite the same thrill in the march to the Toul sector as in the earlier movement to the trenches of the Lunéville line. After all, even the limited service which the men had received gave them something of the spirit of veterans. Then, too, the movement was less of an adventure. Motor-trucks were few and most of the men marched all the way over roads that were icy. The troops stood up splendidly under the marching test and under the rigorous conditions of housing which were necessary on the march. They had learned to take the weather of France in the same easy, inconsequential way they took the language. For a second time the German spy system fell a good deal short of its reputed omniscience. Seemingly, the enemy was not forewarned of the coming of the Americans. Despite the fact that the troops were tired from their long march, the relief was carried out without a hitch. Toul had been regarded as a comparatively quiet sector, and, while it never did blaze up into major actions during the early months of 1918, it was hardly a rest-camp. It was, as the phrase goes, "locally active." Few parts of the front were enlivened with as many raids and minor thrusts, and No Man's Land was the scene of constant patrol encounters, which lost nothing in spirit, even if they bulked small in size and importance. It is probable that the Germans had no ambitious offensive plans in regard to the Toul sector. They tried, however, to keep the Americans at that point so busy and so harassed that it would be impossible for Pershing to send men to help stem the drives against the French and the English. The failure of this plan will be shown in the later chapters. Before going on to take up in some detail the life of the men in the Toul sector, it is necessary to record a casualty suffered by Major-General Leonard Wood. While inspecting the French lines General Wood was wounded in the arm when a French gun exploded. Five French soldiers were killed and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles E. Kilbourne and Major Kenyon A. Joyce, who accompanied General Wood, were slightly wounded. Wood returned to America shortly after the accident, and did not have the privilege of coming back to France with the division he had trained. But for all that he had a unique distinction. Leonard Wood was the first American major-general to earn the right to a wounded stripe.