"The British Third and Fourth Armies and portions of Franco-American reserves who had been brought up were beaten, and on the line of Bapaume-Bouchavesnes and behind the Somme, between Péronne and Ham, as well as at Chauny, were repulsed with the heaviest of losses. "The corps of Generals von Webern and von Conte and the troops of General von Geyl, after a fierce battle, crossed the Crozat Canal. "French, English, and American regiments which had been brought up from the southwest for a counterattack were thrown back on Chauny in a southwesterly direction." The next day General Pershing threw further light on the mystery in a message to the War Department: "Reference to the German communiques of the 24th and 25th regarding American troops: Two regiments of railway engineers are with the British armies involved in this battle. Three companies of engineers were working in the areas mentioned in the communique in the vicinity of the Crozat Canal." Thereby hung a tale similar to that which recorded the part American engineers took at Cambrai, as told in the previous volume. By true Teutonic indirection, the German "Vorwärts," in commenting on the battle in the area named, indicated that the American share in it was not negligible: "Attacks of combined Allied forces against the pivot of the German attacking front near La Fère were particularly heavy. These counterattacks did not find us unprepared. It testifies to the superior foresight of the German command that these attacks, in which American troops certainly participated only symbolically, were not only beaten off, but were thrown back on the Oise Canal by an energetic blow." These allusions were foretokens that something unusual was taking place. The staid official language of General Pershing, in a communication to the War Department, thus described what had happened: "Certain units of United States Engineers, serving with a British army battalion, March 21 and April 3, 1918, while under shell fire, carried out destruction of material dumps at Chaulnes, fell back with British forces to Moreuil, where the commands laid out trench work, then proceeded to Demuin, and were assigned a sector of the defensive line, which was constructed and manned by them, thence moved to a position on the line near Warfusee-Abancourt and extending to north side of Bois de Toillauw. The commands started for this position on March 27, 1918, and occupied it until April 3, 1918, during this time the commanding officer of a unit of United States Engineers being in command of the subsector occupied by his troops. This command was in more or less continuous action during its stay in this position. On April 3, 1918, the command was ordered to fall back to Abbeville." General Rawlinson, commanding the British forces engaged in this battle, acknowledged the services performed by American engineers in a letter to the colonel commanding a United States engineer regiment.