The Germans at once locked horns with them at Neuilly, Château-Thierry, and Jaulgonne. When the Americans appeared near the first-named place, the Germans were trying to enter Neuilly Wood. They had succeeded in entering the village of Neuilly-la-Poterie near by and found the adjacent woods, occupied by the French and Americans, a stumblingblock to their advance. The American machine gunners mowed down the advancing enemy battalions and later supported the French infantry in a counterattack which forced the enemy to retire beyond the northern edge of the wood. On June 31, 1918, the Germans made another attempt to drive the Americans out. They concentrated large forces and advanced in massed formation. Again they were met by a rain of machine-gun fire, which smothered a similar hail of bullets the Germans had shed on the Americans from hastily erected machine-gun positions on the skirts of the wood. The Americans advanced before the Germans reached their line, engaged them at close quarters with the bayonet, broke their formations and sent them fleeing in confusion to the ruined village beyond the wood whence they had come. While these attacks were under way American and French troops on the Marne near Jaulgonne, east of Château-Thierry, were engaged in repelling a battalion of Germans who had forced a passage of the river at that point. In a sharp combat, marked by the fierceness of their machine-gun fire, the French and Americans, fighting side by side, almost wiped out the German forces which reached the southern bank of the Marne. Most of the survivors were rounded up in small groups and captured. They numbered a hundred. A second German attack was launched later with shock troops, who also gained a footing on the southern bank, but again their stay was not long. The footbridge on which they crossed was swept by American machine-gun fire, and rushes of American infantry forced the enemy back. The most notable of these preliminary contacts the Germans had with the Americans on the southern arc of the salient was at Château-Thierry. The battalion of American machine gunners already mentioned, which had been posted on May 31, 1918, to guard the river bridges at that town, found the Germans already in the northern outskirts. The town lies on both sides of the Marne, which is there spanned by a big bridge. A little to the northward a canal runs parallel to the river and is crossed by a smaller bridge. The Germans had made their way into the northern part of the town through a gap they had driven in the Allied lines to the left, and began to stream through the streets toward the bridge, intending to establish themselves firmly on the southern bank and capture the town.