It should be understood that our corps
organizations are very elastic, and that we have at no time had
permanent assignments of divisions to corps.
[Sidenote: The attack on St. Mihiel begins.]
[Sidenote: Breaking the barbed-wire defenses.]
After four hours' artillery preparation, the seven American divisions
in the front line advanced at 5 a.m., on September 12, assisted by a
limited number of tanks manned partly by Americans and partly by the
French. These divisions, accompanied by groups of wire cutters and
others armed with bangalore torpedoes, went through the successive bands
of barbed wire that protected the enemy's front line and support
trenches, in irresistible waves on schedule time, breaking down all
defense of an enemy demoralized by the great volume of our artillery
fire and our sudden approach out of the fog.
[Sidenote: The First Army takes the salient.]
[Sidenote: Many prisoners and guns taken.]
Our First Corps advanced to Thiaucourt, while our Fourth Corps curved
back to the southwest through Nonsard. The Second Colonial French Corps
made the slight advance required of it on very difficult ground, and the
Fifth Corps took its three ridges and repulsed a counterattack. A rapid
march brought reserve regiments of a Division of the Fifth Corps into
Vigneulles in the early morning, where it linked up with patrols of our
Fourth Corps, closing the salient and forming a new line west of
Thiaucourt to Vigneulles, and beyond Fresnes-en-Woevre.
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