The pretense could no longer be sustained after her abortive drive against the eastern and southern flanks of the Soissons-Rheims salient on July 14, 1918. There was a reason. Germany might ignore the presence of American detachments operating with the French or British and be airily blind to the activities of American patrols along the Lorraine or Alsace fronts. They were merely "the enemy." But in making this plunge to widen the salient by way of encircling Rheims and cutting another way to Paris she crashed into an obstacle that compelled recognition. It was the First American Army Corps, numbering some 250,000 men, under the command of Major General Hunter Liggett. If Americans, in her self-deceiving view, had before been as needles in a haystack, here they had become the haystack itself, and it was all needles! The American army skirted the southern arc of the salient, eastward along the Marne somewhere beyond Jaulgonne, westward through Château-Thierry to Torcy, where it joined the French. Germany's first operation was to make a feint of attacking the American lines northwest of Château-Thierry by way of screening her major operation, which was to break through the American barrier guarding the Marne. The assault was especially violent in the Vaux area, which was enveloped in a heavy barrage following the usual bombardment of high explosives and gas. Under the barrage storming parties attacked the village. The system of infiltration by groups was followed and some of the groups succeeded in penetrating one of the American outposts on the northeast. The Americans swarmed out and poured a withering rifle and machine-gun fire on the assailants, and counterattacked on the latter's right, where the penetration had taken place. It was a direct and flanking fire, held in reserve until the foe had approached the American front-line trenches, from which the troops had withdrawn. Its effect was to demoralize the attackers, who retired in disorder. The counterattack brought the American lines 750 yards ahead and yielded a number of prisoners, whose capture was due to a barrage laid by the American artillery, which cut off the enemy's retreat. The attack had an immediate sequel in the evacuation by the Germans of Hill 204, upon an advance by the Americans up its west side. The Germans had paid much to hold this hill, resisting many assaults, notably the one described in the last chapter, and now they chose to vacate it rather than defend the hill further. Their tenure of all this area was to be very brief, and perhaps they knew it. Soon after the Vaux demonstration, the Germans attacked the American and French positions all along the Marne. Ordered to break through the Americans holding the line south of the Marne, and reach a line running eleven kilometers south of Jaulgonne, running through Montigny, they crossed the Marne under the protection of a severe bombardment, and pushed ahead three kilometers to a line through Crezancy.