The most disastrous example in throwing an untrained division into a violent attack was that of the British 21st Division in the fall of 1915 at Loos, which in trying to apply its drill-ground training under fire, became disorganized and failed to take its objectives. Later, after it had had more experience, this same division, though no more courageous than in its first battle, proved itself masterful in the complicated technique of modern attack which it had learned in diligent application in smaller actions after Loos, and by applying the lessons learned at Loos by thorough drilling. Practically all our pioneer divisions which had had long experience in France were either engaged at Saint Mihiel or else they were occupied elsewhere. For the new offensive we must therefore depend upon new divisions which had been a shorter time in France than the 1st or 2d or 26th or 42d Divisions. Following the attack by the American army on the Meuse-Argonne line and the 4th French Army on its left with their threat toward the lines of communications, the British and French were to strike the Hindenburg line in the St. Quentin-Cambrai region on September 29, 1918, and on October 2, 1918, the French were to attack to the east of Rheims. Thus a succession of offensives were to broaden the whole front of operations in an effort to break through the old trench line, all the way from the Meuse to the North Sea, and bring the Allied armies into the open where they would be forever free of trench shackles. This was a most audacious enterprise which was warranted by the information which the Allies had of the state of the German army. The Bulgarian army was beginning to disintegrate and the Italians had turned the Austrian offensive on the Piave into a disaster from which the Austro-Hungarian armies could not recover. Throughout the months of August and September, 1918, the Germans had been yielding large numbers of prisoners and an immense quantity of material, while the Allied losses had been comparatively light. The German cards were now on the table; the number of German divisions in reserve were known; and in the arrival of American divisions the Allies had a vast store of man power. We had become the dependable quantity of a mighty growing reserve force. Marshal Foch chose to put us in the very hinge of the whole movement and he set for our objective in a swift series of advances nothing less than the heights of Buzancy--the heights of the whaleback itself. Had we gained that within three or four days, we would have threatened the retreat of the whole German army, indeed, the capture of a hundred thousand or more Germans would have been fairly certain. No one considered such a success except in the category of a military miracle until German reserves were more depleted than they were at the end of September.