American engineers also took part in the battle, particularly during the
first days of the German offensive. Three companies belonging to two
regiments of the American Railway Engineers were reported in the German
War Office statement as operating in the areas of Chauny and the Crozat
Canal. This statement was confirmed in a report from General Pershing to
the Acting Chief of Staff at Washington. The Americans had been working
in the rear lines with Canadian engineers, under Canadian command. When
the German attack came, they threw down their tools and seized the
weapons with which they had been armed for some months, and formed
themselves into a fighting unit. The Germans came on, and finally
reached the positions where the Americans were waiting. The number of
the engineers was comparatively small. They had no intention of
retreating, however, and were bent upon killing all the Germans
possible.
As the first enemy wave advanced, the American forces let them come
until they were within certain range: then opened fire, pouring in a
storm of bullets. Gaps appeared in the advancing lines at many places,
but the German waves came on, without firing a single shot. The
Americans were unable to understand these tactics. By this time their
weapons were so hot that they could not be used effectively, and the
enemy was close, so that the engineers retired, fighting, took up
another position, then turned and began operations again. A British
officer who witnessed the engagement is reported to have said: "They
held on by their teeth until the last moment, inflicting terrific
casualties on the enemy. Then they moved back and waited for the
Germans, and repeated the performance." By the time the engineers
reached a place somewhere near Noyon they were nearly exhausted and
almost without equipment. There they had a chance to rest and re-equip.
On the sectors where American troops had been stationed before the
decision to place them at the disposal of General Foch intensive
training operations in the front-line trenches, with artillery fire and
raiding of the enemy's positions, had been proceeding along much the
same lines as during the previous month. A dispatch dated April 3
reported that American troops on a certain sector other than that in the
region of Toul had been subjected to an extraordinarily heavy gas
attack.
With the acceptance of the American offer to join in the battle of
Picardy, troops began to be withdrawn from the sectors thus far occupied
and from the American training camps in France, and hurried as rapidly
as possible to points where the French and British required
reinforcements.
Casualty lists showed that the Rainbow Division, (composed of troops
from nearly every State in the Union,) the first of the National Guard
divisions to cross the Atlantic, had been engaged in the fighting. The
150th Machine Gun Battalion, made up of guardsmen from the old 2d
Wisconsin Infantry, had suffered heavily; of the sixty-eight men named
as severely wounded in one list fifty-six were identified as members of
the Wisconsin machine-gun unit.