In April the Germans attempted an ambitious local operation against the Americans northwest of Toul. They planned to enter the third line positions, it was subsequently learned, and for this purpose they sent a special battalion of 800 shock troops equipped with wire, dynamite, intrenching tools and other implements for adapting trenches to their own use. The attack was preceded by a violent bombardment of the American positions, lasting three days. Hundreds of shells fell, many of them charged with gas. At sunrise on April 10 the German infantrymen signaled their batteries for a barrage, and under it they started out for the American line. They were selected from the best men of three regiments and were preceded by shock platoons. The American gunners did not wait for any rocket signal from their own side before getting into action. They immediately started a counterbarrage, which caught the advancing Germans before they could reach the American wire entanglements. The German officers sent their troops through the answering barrage, with the result that fewer than 200 of the 800 troops succeeded in making any advance. Only two reached the American line; both were captured and one died immediately after from wounds. The fighting developed on no-man's-land. American outposts moved to the first line and with other infantrymen and machine gunners waited for those of the attackers who survived the American barrage. As the raiders neared the Americans poured a deadly fire into them, then climbed out of the trenches and engaged them with grenades and in hand-to-hand fighting. The enemy was driven back to his own lines, suffering serious casualties from American heavy machine-gun and rifle fire rained on his men as they fled. No-man's-land was strewn with German dead; several bodies hung on the barbed wire after the enemy retired; and numbers were killed by American guns before they could leave the German trenches. The fight lasted two hours in a heavy morning mist; but the American gunners found their aim despite the poor visibility. It was a crushing defeat, and two days later the Germans, smarting under it, sought to avenge it by reorganizing the 800 shock troops, which were filled out by picked men from other units, and ordering them to take the American positions. As before a violent bombardment, accompanied by gas shells, signalized the attack. The German guns kept up a harassing fire all night, and with dawn came the infantry attack, directed against French troops who flanked the American forces on the left in the forest of Apremont. While this engagement was proceeding the Americans launched a counterattack on the German line, moving forward behind a perfect curtain fire. The enemy, driven out of his trenches, was forced to fight in the open. A deadly machine-gun and automatic-rifle fire was poured into the Germans, who offered stubborn resistance at first, but latter retreated to their second line, hotly pursued by the American troops.