While these scattered local operations enlivened the various American sectors, the great German spring offensive was proceeding against the British and French well out of the established American zones. As that offensive developed in its scope, less attention was paid to the American lines east of Verdun, and save for the Seicheprey raid and the clash at Xivray, both to be presently described, the operations there were of little moment. The usual little amenities of war went on between isolated groups of combatants, mostly local scrimmages in which not more than a dozen or twenty men participated. These took the customary form of patrol actions, clashes between scouts, the uprooting of enemy's snipers' nests and the occasional invasion of trenches by one or the other side. There were ceaseless artillery duels, accompanied by clouds of gas, and daily fatalities, not all of them due to actual warfare. Here and there small engagements, by reason of a swinging, thoroughgoing effectiveness on the part of the bands of Americans who shared in them, stand out of the daily routine of the trench warfare. In one that took place near Bremenil, east of Lunéville, in May, 1918, when a body of Germans essayed to attack the American positions, solely to take prisoners to ascertain the American strength, not a single German got back who succeeded in entering the American trenches. A gas bombardment led the attack, followed by a heavy barrage fire, under which fifty German soldiers attempted to reach the American line; nine of the fourteen raiders were killed outright, four were captured, and one died of wounds. No American was captured. While comparative quiet reigned in the St. Mihiel, Toul, and Lunéville sectors, as the summer advanced, a further extension of American sectors, eastward of these positions, running almost to the Swiss border, became revealed in General Pershing's reports. American forces were heard of at St. Dié, Mulhouse, Colmar, and near Belfort. With the main German forces busily--and unsuccessfully--engaged on other parts of the front, the Americans hereabout appear to pass uneventful days. The German forces before them, barring their occasional liquid fire, artillery outbreaks, air reconnoissances, and machine-gun activity, were disposed to let well enough alone.