The beginning of March, 1918, saw the first pitched battle between Americans and Germans in the St. Mihiel salient north of Toul. The enemy started it by a morning raid in a driving wet snow, preceded by heavy gunfire, intermixed with poison gas. The latter was discharged on the trenches in a generous hail of shells, the Germans evidently thinking that this second cloud of gas would daunt the American troops after their previous foretaste. The Americans were not daunted; their masks quickly covered them, and few troops were affected. The woods behind the salient were shot to pieces by the German fire. As soon as the barrage was raised on the trenches to the right of the salient, some 300 Germans swept forward under the protection of their fire. They jumped into what was left of the trenches, expecting to make a haul of prisoners; but they found the Americans ready for them. A fierce hand-to-hand fight followed in front of wire entanglements and in shell holes. Meantime American barrage fire swept no-man's-land, catching many running Germans who had turned tail from fighting at close quarters. The Germans were thrown back, leaving ten dead in the American trenches. Two were officers, entangled in the wire. The ground was littered with enemy hand grenades, boxes of explosives for destroying dugouts, and incendiary bombs the enemy had no opportunity of using. The enemy had paid dearly for his enterprise, but the Americans also suffered in proportion. Berlin claimed that twelve had been captured. They had cut the American wire with caution, making no noise, but the sentry was watching their performance all the time, and let them proceed until he was sure of routing them. Another American patrol experienced, for the first time, a German attack of liquid fire. Enemy troops were about to throw flame projectors into the American trenches when an American patrol near by opened fire on them. The Germans fled precipitately, pursued by the Americans, and dropped four projectors, two of which were flaming. All the projectors had been punctured by American shots. The foregoing series of engagements shows that in every case the Germans were the aggressors. The Americans, in fact, were merely holding the Lorraine sector without aspiring to take the field until they were better acquainted with trench warfare. The Germans, believing they had green troops before them, were accordingly venturesome, and disposed to put them on their mettle, which they accordingly did, only to find that the supposedly raw American troops were no longer raw. The Germans themselves had contributed to ridding them of any greenness with which they credited them. The Americans had occupied the Lorraine sector as substitutes for the French, and the Germans were accordingly eager to know the quality of their new antagonists. Hence these series of raids made on the American front. Soon the tables were to be turned by the Americans conducting raids of their own. CHAPTER XLIV