[Illustration: American soldiers near a barricade in the Rue du Pont, Château-Thierry. The Germans were driven from the town in the First Battle of the Marne, 1914, and again in the Second Battle of the Marne, 1918.] A group of thirty Americans joined the French; they were pitted against hidden machine guns, camouflaged rapid-fire nests, gas shells, and the deafening roar of a heavy barrage. They were shot at by snipers hiding in trees, they were shot at by big and little cannon with a roar that deafened them; but they went ahead with the French veterans. They took machine-gun posts, they took trench positions. But the German resistance was too strong, due in part to their new device of fighting in ambush from the tops of high trees, where they escaped shells exploding on the ground, and obtained a good vantage point for pouring shot downward on the attackers below. Elsewhere on the western front American forces, linked with the British lines, aided a body of Australians to attack Hamel. It was an early morning advance, extending one and a half miles on a four-mile front, including the village of Hamel and the trench system beyond it, south of the Somme. It was the first time Americans had fought with the British. They comprised only a few companies fighting as platoons among the Australians; but upon them rested the honor of the United States in the adventure. The date, moreover, was July 4, 1918. "You are going in with the Australians," their officers told them, "and these lads always deliver the goods. We expect you to do the same. We shall be very disappointed if you do not fulfill the hopes and belief we have in you." The Americans listened with a light in their eyes. They went in, with "Lusitania!" as their battle cry, celebrating the Fourth of July with "astonishing ardor, discipline and strength," the Australian officers said. If the Americans had any fault at all, the Australians commented, it was overeagerness to advance; they could hardly be restrained from going too rapidly behind the wide belt of the British shell fire as the barrage rolled forward. The Hamel episode projected as a reminder that American forces were clinching with the foe on other parts of the front as well as on the Marne. But it was on the latter battle ground that the eyes of the world were presently drawn. There the American army swung into its greatest stride at this stage of the war. CHAPTER LIV ACROSS THE MARNE AND BACK Officially Germany had refused to recognize the growing weight of American belligerency. If she could evade alluding to American forces specifically in reporting events on the battle field, she did so. "The enemy," to be sure, covered a multitude of enemies--more than half the world--so why designate which one, and why designate the one now most feared, of whose mounting strength it was not expedient to enlighten the beguiled people at home?