“It was between the front lines, in the maze of old abandoned trenches, and in the marshy No Man’s Land between these, that the American Army in France had its first taste of real patrolling. Each night, every battalion in the line would send out a patrol on some mission or other; and every now and then the Germans would send one out, and occasionally these two would mix in the pitch black night and fight it out. The Americans were very brave, while the Germans were very skillful, so the honors at first went mostly to the enemy until it was learned by sad experience that it does not pay to send a patrol of ten men out every night at precisely the same hour, through the same gap in the wire, on the same sort of mission. The capture of one such patrol of the 16th Infantry Regiment taught the whole American Army a lesson.” Shipley Thomas, The History of the A.E.F. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1920), p. 59.