And "some of the divisions were fighting their first battle." They were faced also at the beginning of the advance by some of the best remaining German troops.

When one thinks of all the long and bitter training in the field that went to the perfecting of French or British staff work, and then of the difficult nature of the ground over which the First American Army had to make its way, one can only feel the deepest sympathy for the losses sustained by the fresh and eager troops.

The Argonne forest itself had long been recognised as impenetrable to frontal attack, and on the Argonne side of the American twenty-mile front, along the western edge of the valley of the Aire, the ground is still heavily wooded and often very hilly.

As one of the ablest military critics, himself a soldier of great distinction, expressed it to me: "Foch had set the Americans an uncommonly hard task!" But if there was some failure in those matters where neither bravery nor natural intelligence can take the place of long training, and experience in the field, there was no failure in ardour or in spirit.
In spite of heavy losses, General Pershing never failed to push on.
Starting from a line on the northern edge of the great Verdun battle-field, Montfaucon, the German headquarters during the Verdun fighting of 1916, was captured in three days.

Then came severe fighting against fierce counter-attacks, and great difficulties with transport over shell-torn ground and broken roads, difficulties increased by bad weather.