The French approach to the 369th was different from the American in a specific practical way: the French gave the regiment front-line assignments. The initial period of labor work — the kind of assignment that Black units received by default under American command — ended when the French 16th took the regiment under its authority. The 369th went to the trenches.
The Argonne sector where the regiment served in the spring of 1918 had been a relatively stable portion of the Western Front, but stable in the specific way that the French army understood stability by 1918: regular artillery exchanges, frequent patrol activity, constant small-unit raiding, and the daily attrition of trench warfare that consumed men steadily without the dramatic large-scale attacks that the first years of the war had featured.
It was in this sector — attached to the French 16th Division, in the Argonne Forest, in a trench system that had existed for years — that Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were assigned to Outpost 20 on the night of May 14-15, 1918.
## The German Raiding Party: What It Was Trying to Do
Understanding what the German raiding party at Outpost 20 was doing helps explain why Johnson’s defense of the post was militarily significant beyond the two individual soldiers involved.
German raiding operations in 1918 had specific objectives. The spring of 1918 was the period of the great German offensive — Operation Michael and its successor operations — that attempted to break the Allied line before American reinforcements arrived in sufficient strength to change the balance of forces. The German high command was operating on a ticking clock: every month that passed brought more American soldiers to France, and the window for a German victory was narrowing.