According to the original plan we were to have six divisions to a corps. Major General Hunter Liggett, as soon as we had four divisions in training, had been set the task of organizing our first corps. He had a high reputation in the regular army as a student and tactician, and he was a man of great poise and a most thorough student. The withdrawal of our divisions from our Lorraine sector, in order to assist in the defense of Paris and later in the counteroffensive of July, had allowed General Liggett little practical experience. With the rapid arrival of our troops other corps staffs were rapidly formed. Major General Robert L. Bullard, who had commanded the 1st Division in the Toul sector and in the attack on Cantigny, was given the command of the 3d Corps. For a brief period both General Liggett and General Bullard and their staff had some experience acting as corps commanders in the Château-Thierry operations. Not until the Saint Mihiel operations, however, had we ever had more than two divisions operating together under American command. Meanwhile we had organized our First Army, which was under the personal command of General Pershing. With our new corps and army organization, we were now to undertake an attack against the fortifications of one of the most formidable positions on the western front with a shorter period of preparation than had been generally accepted as necessary by the veteran French and British armies whose staffs had had four years' training under actual battle conditions. The experts, whether in the gaining of intelligence, in the handling of traffic, or in the highly complex technique of the arrangements for the liaison of artillery and infantry and aviation and all the other branches of uniformity of operations between the divisions, were to apply in practice what they had learned in theory and by observation of the Allied armies. Their theory had been learned at the staff school of Langres, solving problems of combat organization and listening to lectures by staff officers of other armies; but theory is not practice. Since 1915 there had been no important action from Verdun to the Swiss border. The wedge of the Saint Mihiel salient, which the Germans had won in 1914 with its commanding hills and ridges, had remained an eyesore on the map of the western front. Aside from its strong natural positions it was defended by the most elaborate of modern fortifications. By the criterion of precedents of previous offensives against front-line positions we should succeed in our undertaking only at an immense cost of life, should the Germans decide to make a determined defense. Until a few days before the attack we had every expectation that they would. The original plan was that we should go through to Mars-la-Tour and Etain until we were before the great German fortress of Metz. Marshal Foch changed this plan, as we shall see.