AMERICA OVER THE TOP The first direct attack on the German lines made by American forces in the Lorraine sector took place on the night of March 9, 1918, with the cooperation of the French. Two raids were made. The troops engaged were ordered to cut off the two ends of a salient in the German line, flatten out the salient by artillery fire, enter the trenches, bomb the dugouts, sweep the trenches generally, and return. Intense artillery fire, lasting four hours, leveled the German positions before the Franco-American troops advanced. They were divided into two forces, with small French detachments flanking each, and went forward at midnight behind a creeping barrage, each on a front of six hundred yards. Starting simultaneously, one advanced northwest of the salient, the other to the northeast. On the German first lines being reached, the barrage was lifted so as to box in the enemy positions at both points. The troops dropped into the trenches, expecting a hand-to-hand fight, but found that the Germans had fled. Continuing, they reached the second German line six hundred yards farther on while American machine guns fired on each flank of the two parties to check flanking operations by the enemy. The yield in prisoners was poor, the Germans having decamped. One French flanking party found two wounded Germans. The Americans found none. But they blew up a number of excellent concrete dugouts and returned with large quantities of material and valuable papers. While they were in the vacated German lines, enemy artillery began a vigorous counterbarrage, but it was quickly silenced by gas shells hurled by American heavy and light guns. The raid was followed by a second on another part of the line, undertaken without the aid of the French. A preliminary bombardment swept the Germans' front trenches, tearing gaps in their barbed-wire entanglements, and wrought other destruction. The German batteries came into action, but accomplished nothing to halt the American progress. Entering the German trenches behind one side of a "box" barrage, which moved forward in front of them, they found numerous Germans hiding in the dugouts. Hand-to-hand fighting followed, the Americans using their automatic pistols and rifles. They penetrated 300 yards of the enemy line, going beyond their objective. More fighting developed, but the Germans were not equal to the assault and fled, leaving a number of dead and wounded in their trenches. The Americans fought so fast in effecting their object that the army doctors who accompanied them had little to do. They returned to their own lines without being impeded by a single German shell, and without fatalities. It was all over so quickly that the German batteries had no chance to get into real action. It was just a fifteen-minute adventure undertaken by way of feeling their way in testing their capacity to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.