Higher up, northwest of these positions in Picardy, American troops had established positions in union with the British forces under Sir Douglas Haig. Thus "American fronts" by the middle of May, 1918, interposed along the entire western line from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Their distribution between French and British sectors placed fresh troops where they were needed and afforded scope for invaluable training in modern warfare to both officers and men that they could obtain in no other way. Those in Picardy were not long in proving that they were equal to their experienced Anglo-French comrades in arms in the task they had set themselves. CHAPTER XLVIII CANTIGNY Foretokens of a movement against Cantigny came in the middle of May, 1918, when a searching American artillery fire exploded a huge German ammunition dump at that place and set a number of fires blazing behind the German lines in Montdidier. Near the latter town the Germans later drove a wedge into the American line in a retaliatory attack and stayed there for four hours. The American counterthrust hurled them back; the troops not only drove them across no-man's-land, but followed them into their own second line and made a haul of prisoners. The Germans suffered heavily in the fighting, which was of a hand-to-hand nature at times. The bravery of the Americans may be illustrated by the case of a private whose arm was blown off. Dazed, he kept on fighting, and did not know he had been injured until a comrade came to his aid. This attack, like those made on the Lorraine front, was an attempt to push back new troops with the object of creating a feeling that they formed a weak link in the defending chain. The next day, however, the weak link stretched beyond its own line and essayed an assault on Cantigny. The action, May 28, 1918, took place while huge German forces elsewhere were in the swing of a drive southward through the Allied lines between Noyon and Rheims, on a forty-mile front, and had overrun the Chemin-des-Dames--throwing back the American forces there--and crossed the Aisne. The Cantigny exploit did not bulk large in the great battle that raged from Ypres to Rheims; but it showed that, put on their mettle, the new troops were first-class fighting men and a match for the Germans. Amiens, in the neighborhood of which the enemy already had had a foretaste of American valor, was only twenty miles away to the northwest. To the American right the Germans were forging their way to the Marne and creating the celebrated salient between Soissons and Rheims. Away to the left the British and French had just checked the second phase of the German advance between Ypres and Arras. Cantigny brought a little consolation to the Allies, though only a counterdiversion of small account, in the midst of the sweeping German onslaught.