German comfort in the Forest retreats—The 77th see-sawing through—The 28th plowing down the trough of the Aire—Scaling the escarpments of the ChÊne Tondu and Taille l'AbbÉ—An enemy counter-attack—The 35th pushing four miles down the east wall of the Aire—Pushing through an alley to the untenable position of Exermont—Unjust reflections on the persistence of the 35th.

On the left flank the First Corps, composed of the 77th, 28th, and 35th Divisions, was having quite as hard fighting as the Third Corps on the right flank. The regiment of the 92nd Division (colored), National Army, forming the link with the French on the western edge of the Argonne Forest, buffeted in its inexperience by the intricacies of attack through the maze of trenches, was withdrawn after its initial service. It was better that the 77th should take its place in meeting the baffling requirements of liaison between two Allied armies.

In the trench system before the Forest, the "Liberty" men of the 77th met comparatively slight resistance, their chief trouble being to maintain the uniformity of their advance through the fortifications and across the shell-craters, over the tricky ground of sharp ridges and gullies littered with torn tree-trunks and limbs. The division staff had in vain sought opportunities for flanking maneuvers. A straight frontal attack must be made. "There's the Forest. Go through it!" paraphrases the simple orders of the division commander. This put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the young platoon and company commanders. They knew that they could depend upon one thing. There was nothing but forest ahead of them. They need not concern themselves with any open fields, though they would have their share of swamps and ravines, which would not lessen the difficulty of keeping their units in line through the thickets.

If the French "scalloping" on the left of the Forest, and the 28th Division "scalloping" on the right of the Forest, did not drive in their protecting wedges, a cross-fire would hold the 77th's flanks back while its center, driving ahead, would be caught between the infantry and machine-gun fire from the Germans on either flank. If the French and the 28th fully succeeded in their mission, then, as we already know, all the 77th would have to do would be to "mop up" any Germans who failed to withdraw in time from the pressure on either side. According to this plan the 77th was to have an easy time. The plan failing to work out, the 77th had anything but an easy time.

The Forest was held, as it frequently had been, I understand, by Landwehr troops. Some of the old fellows, who were not sturdy enough for real warfare, had spent months and even years there. They considered that they had the squatter right of occupation to the Argonne. There were theaters, rest camps, and well-appointed hospitals, with enough verboten signs along the paths to alleviate homesickness in a foreign land. Isolated in their peaceful solitude, where they could be cool in summer and comfortable in winter, they took the interest in adding to the comforts of their sylvan surroundings of a city man in his new place in the country. Positive artistry was achieved in the camp of the German commanding general. The walls of his office and sitting-room were wainscoted, with a snug ante-room where orderlies might attend and messengers might wait. The heating arrangements literally afforded hot water at all hours. A spacious dining-room was supplied from a commodious kitchen. If the French began putting over heavy shells, interrupting the German officers at their chess game or in reading the Cologne Gazette, it was only a few steps to a stairway that led to an electric-lighted chamber so deep in the earth that it was perfectly safe from a direct hit by the largest calibers.

All the headquarters and camps were under canopies of foliage which screened them from aËrial detection. Battalions come here from the death and filth and misery of violent sectors settled down to a holiday existence in an environment associated with a vacation woods. Of course there was a war in progress, but they knew it only through sending out detachments to keep watch and maintain the trenches in repair. The Landwehr men saw enough shell-bursts to say that they had been under fire. Indeed, one was occasionally wounded. There was no need of trench raids for information in a mutually accepted stalemate. To fire more than enough shells to keep up the postures of war might bring retaliation which would interfere with smoking your pipe and drinking your beer at leisure.

After this pacific routine had been long established and so much effort and pains had been spent in improvements, appeared these outsiders of the Liberty Division in the rude haste that they might show in a subway station at home. They had no respect for the traditional privacy of a gentleman's country estate. However, the irritated occupants were no passive resistants. They had thought out in precise terms how they would defend their fastness against any such outrageous lawlessness. They knew every road and path, and how to make use of their ideal woodland cover. They might not be strong in the front line, but as the military men say they were "echelonned deep."

There was no line of resistance in the first stages of the advance, but many successive points of resistance, ready to receive the invader in turn, punishing him severely in his slow progress if he were not repulsed. But even they in their chosen positions, covering avenues where the foliage was not dense, could not see far. This developed close-quarters fighting from the start.

As the Germans had particularly depended upon light railways in the Argonne, the roads, except transversal ones, had been neglected. This did not matter, so far as it concerned bringing up the artillery. There was no maneuvering artillery in the thick woods. Even if there had been, it could not get any angle of fire for shells which would burst short of their targets against tree-trunks. It was exclusively an infantry fight except for the machine-guns and the baby soixante-quinze or 37-millimeter guns, in which the heads of the Americans bobbed through the thickets in search of the hidden heads of the defenders. A platoon commander might not keep watch of his own men in the maze—let alone see what the platoons on his flank were doing.

On the first day the 77th had practically reached its objectives, on the second it was to suffer the same loss of momentum as other divisions. The "scalloping" on the edges of the Forest, however valorous, could not keep up to schedule. If the Forest boundaries had been straight lines on a plain, the result might have been different. Liaison over the escarpments in the valley of the Aire and the hills and ravines on the left became a nightmare. Still the orders were "Push ahead!" to battalions or companies which were not up. If under this spur they advanced beyond their flanks, then the flanks were to "push ahead!" Thus in a process of see-sawing platoons and companies continued to make progress. The units in the middle of the Forest saw nothing but trees and underbrush. All the world was forest to them. Those who found themselves on the edge looked out on stretches of the great battlefield under puffs of shell smoke, and to the going and coming of aeroplanes in another world, and possibly were forced to seek shelter in the Forest by bursts of machine-gun fire to which they were exposed from other divisional sectors.

So it was not surprising that the men of the 77th, immersed in the Forest depths, should think that they were fighting the whole battle. They knew nothing of the "scalloping" tactics. Their horizon was confined to a few square yards. To them the Argonne had no appeal of a holiday woods. Sylvan glades, which the poet might admire, meant stumbling down one side and crawling up the other, with ears keen for the whipping sound which might signify that they were in an ambush. They might not stop in for a nap at the rest-camps. They were not sleeping in those beautiful wainscoted quarters, but on the dank ground in the deep shadow of the trees which kept the sunlight from slaking moisture after the rains. The rolling kitchens were held up in the rear where the trucks cut deep in the saturated woodland earth, and hurdled over tree-trunks between sloughs, while the Forest made the darkness all the more trying as the weary engineers endeavored to hold up their end.

The infantry continued its valiant and persistent see-sawing. On the 29th they made a big swing on the right, and on the left took a dÉpÔt de machines, or roundhouse, and the treacherous ravine south of Binarville in which it was situated, by hard and audacious fighting. On the 30th the whole line again made progress, against machine-gunners who had cunningly prepared paths to give them visibility for a greater distance, and to draw the attackers into the line of their fire. They charged down the slopes of the Charlevaux ravine and its irregular branches, across the streams and swamps at their bottoms, and up the slopes on the other side—all this through woods and thickets, of course. The next day an even deeper advance was made over very irregular ground, while the right in triumphant ardor pressed forward, ahead of the left and center, across the Fontaine-aux-Charmes ravine and its branches and their streams until it was past the heights of the ChÊne Tondu. As the ChÊne Tondu was not yet wholly in the possession of the division on the right, the gallant victors deserved something better in their weariness than to be forced to retire by overwhelming fire in flank and rear from the commanding heights. The night of October 1st the "Liberty" men, after six days in which they had steadily advanced for a depth of six miles, held the line from the ChÊne Tondu across the Forest to a point north of Binarville, its supporting flanks on either edge of the Forest in a deadlock.

There was forest and still more forest ahead of the 77th. After it had conquered the Argonne, it might have a chance to take the Bourgogne Wood beyond on the way to the Lille-Metz railway. After this experience the New Yorkers ought not to be afraid to go into Central Park after dark when they returned home.

They may have thought that the 28th on their right was not keeping up to program, and the 28th may have thought that they were not; but neither had the advantage that I had of seeing the other in action during those terrible days. Astride the Aire river, having the trough as its very own, the 28th put a heart of iron into its first impact, and tempered it to steel in its succeeding attacks. The "scalloping" process which was its mission looked just as simple on a flat map as the swing toward the Meuse of the 33rd; but then, everything looked simple on the map, and everything for all the divisions might have been as simple as it looked if it had not been for the enemy. He was always interfering with our staff plans. If the Aire's course had been straight, and the valley walls had come down symmetrically to the river bottom, the 28th would have had straight open fighting, which is a satisfaction to brave men whatever the cost. A direct frontal attack was as out of the question for the Pennsylvanians as it was mandatory for the 77th. They must exhibit suppleness and cunning, or bull-dog grit was of no service.

In full realization that the true defense of the Forest was on its flanks, the enemy developed strong resistance in front of the 28th on the first day. The PerriÈres Hill, a bastion in the first line of defense, honeycombed with machine-gun emplacements, held up the attack on the left as it swept its fire over the trench system on either side, covering the steep approaches for its capture which were studded with shell-craters and festooned with tangles of wire. The enemy also set store by the ruins of the town of Varennes in the valley, which were to become so familiar to all the soldiers who ever passed along the Aire road. At Varennes the road crosses the river in sight of the surrounding congeries of hills. Under cover of the ruins and the river banks the Germans had both seventy-sevens and machine-guns, which, well-placed as they were, failed of their purpose. It was now evident that the enemy would strive to hold every height on either side of the Aire with the object of grinding our attacks between the molars of two powerful jaws.

For the German map plan was as simple as ours. It invited our initiative into the open throat of the valley and into blind alleys between the heights blazing with fire. The 28th was to interfere with the German plan just as the Germans were to interfere with the American. Plans did not seem to count. Nothing counted except tactical resource and courage in the face of shells which came screaming and bullets whistling from crests in sight and crests out of sight. Woods fighting was only an incident of the problem for the 28th, which took La Forge on the edge of Montblainville, only to find that the machine-guns in the Bouzon Wood on the west wall had an open field for their fire from three quarters of the compass.

The disadvantage of the 28th's sector from the start was that there was no screen of foliage to cover a deployment before a charge. On the night of the 26th the battalion which had been held up by the PerriÈres Hill was marched round, to carry out the plan of "scalloping," for an attack on the ChÊne Tondu, which was an escarpment projecting out of the Forest into the valley of the Aire north of Montblainville, like a wood-covered promontory into a strait. It commanded the whole river valley and the Forest edge on its front. Its slopes were irregular, with every irregularity seeming to favor the defender, who at every point looked down-hill upon the attacker. Behind it was another escarpment, even stronger, the Taille l'AbbÉ. Between the two the enemy had ample wooded space for moving his reserves and artillery free from observation. Should the ChÊne Tondu be lost, the enemy had only to withdraw with punishing rearguard fire to this second bastion. On the reverse slope of the Taille l'AbbÉ were hospitals, comfortable officers' quarters, and dugouts, while the artillery in position there could shoot over the ChÊne Tondu with plunging fire upon its approaches. Along the heights of the Forest edge and other heights to the rear, other guns, as many as the Germans could spare for the sector, might find perfect camouflage and security.

There were also the heights of the east bank of the Aire to consider. With the river winding past their feet they interlocked across the valley. Thus advancing down the valley meant advancing against heights in front as well as on the flanks. Stretching back to the whale-back itself beyond the heights of the east bank were other heights, even more commanding, whose reverse slopes offered the same kind of inviting cover for long-range artillery as the reverse slopes on the west bank. If a height on one bank were not taken at the same time as the corresponding height on the other, this meant murderous exposure for the men in the attack that succeeded. Therefore, thrifty and fruitful success required a uniformity of movement by the three divisions of the First Corps in conquering the heights of both banks of the Aire and of the Forest's edge.

For the 28th the taking of the ChÊne Tondu was the keystone of the advance. Until it had this height, the 28th could not support the movement of the 77th in the Forest or of the 35th on the east bank of the Aire. The Germans had concentrated their immediate reserves on the ChÊne Tondu, and their guns on its supporting heights.

If the German staff had planned the woods in front of the main slopes of ChÊne Tondu, they could hardly have been in a better location for affording invisibility to machine-gun nests against a visible foe. To have taken the ChÊne Tondu by one fell rush, as our staff desired, might have been possible through sheer weight of man-power by the mustering of all the division's infantry against one sector of its front, supported by the artillery of two or three divisions with unlimited ammunition. The artillery of the 28th was not up. It was having the same trouble about roads as the artillery of other divisions. When the officers of the 28th scouted the avenues of approach in order to maneuver their infantry units economically, they found none which would not require that we charge across open and rising ground against an enemy whose strength our men were to learn by "feeling it" in an attack without adequate shields into concentrations of shell- and machine-gun fire which became the more powerful the more ground they gained.

Availing themselves of every possible opening where the enemy's fire was relatively weak, they forced their way into the village of Apremont in the valley. As soon as this success was known to him, the enemy made up for any neglect in prevision by bringing guns and machine-guns into position to command the village. Wherever the Pennsylvanians made a thrust, if a savage reception were not primed awaiting them, one was soon arranged. Their maneuvers were further hampered by the bends of an unfordable river, which a direct attack for any great depth would have to cross and recross under the interlocking fire. Troops on the narrow river bottom were visible as flies on a wall. Every hour German resistance was strengthening in the Aire sector as in other vital sectors along the front.

Their guns up, the division attacked the ChÊne Tondu a second time in the vigor of renewed confidence and in the light of the knowledge they had gained of the enemy's dispositions. They won a footing; and then attacked again. Their effort now became incessant in trying to make more bites at close quarters, as they struggled for complete mastery. The Germans infiltrated back between our units, and we infiltrated forward between theirs. We might think that we had possession of ground over a certain portion of front, only to find that our efforts to "mop up" were thwarted. With ChÊne Tondu partly conquered in the search for advantage in maneuver, we moved on the Taille l'AbbÉ in flank; and there we found the Germans, thanks to their fresh reserves, in irresistible force. They were firing prodigal quantities of gas-shells wherever our men took cover in any stretch of woods they had conquered.

The 35th on the east bank of the Aire was meeting with deadly opposition which held it back, as we shall see when its story is told. Maintaining liaison on the heights of the east bank with the 28th astride the river was fraught with the same elements of confusion as with the 77th in the monstrous irregularity of the escarpments on the Forest's edge. To which division belonged the khaki figures breaking out of a ravine in an effort to rush a machine-gun nest which held them at its mercy? One thing was certain: they must either advance or retreat. Under the whip of impulse as well as orders they tried to advance. Messages exchanged between neighboring division headquarters, under the pressure of the Corps command to get ahead, were dependent upon reports long in coming out of the recesses of the woods. Each division staff in its faith in the courage of its men, who were fighting on their nerves after sleepless nights, insisted that it was doing its part and would be up—and that, by God! it was up.

The possession of the Aire heights was all important to the Army command, still undaunted in its ambition for the immediate conquest of the whale-back in those fateful days at the end of September. On the 29th two Leavenworth men from Grand Headquarters itself—while two regular colonels were sent to regiments—were put in command of the brigades of the 28th. One of the colonels was killed before he took over his command, and the other later in leading a charge. On the 30th the division was to make another general attack, supported by all available artillery and tanks; but a few minutes before the infantry were to charge, the Germans developed a counter-attack in force. Their troops were middle-aged Landwehr men, who made up in spirit what they lacked in youth. They had been told that theirs was the opportunity to help the Fatherland in a critical moment against these untrained Americans. The courage with which they persisted in their charge was worthy of a better cause. It recalled the freshness and abandon of German volunteers in the first battle of Ypres. Our infantry, already in line to advance over the same ground as the counter-attack, received it with a merciless fire which its ranks kept breasting in fruitless sacrifice. Our tanks, waiting to move forward with our infantry at the moment set for our own attack, carried out their program and literally rolled over many of the survivors of the charge in which our youth had learned some respect for age. Our attack was countermanded, and the next day was October 1st, which was to mark another period of the battle, as I have said.

It had been a good policy in more senses than one to send regulars to take command of the brigades of the 28th. Assigned for the purpose of seeing that the division "pushed ahead," when they looked over the situation their conclusions were a supreme professional tribute to the magnificent persistence of the Pennsylvanians, who had already earned the sobriquet of the Iron Division in place of that of the Keystone Division. Short of food, without sleep, saturated by rain and gas, the men of the 28th had won their gains with superb and tireless initiative, and held them with grim tenacity. In a burning fever of loyal effort, their vitality had been ungrudgingly expended. They staggered from fatigue when they rose to charge. Not only was all the area of advance under shell-fire, but that road through Varennes which both the 28th and the 35th were using was exposed to ruthless and well-calculated blasts from many guns, disrupting communications and further delaying the congested transport. The new brigade commanders, with staff school education and staff experience, as became practical men when face to face with nerve and physical strain which put limitations of human endurance upon the will of the high command, accepted their lesson, which they applied by withdrawing units to give them rest, and having the units remaining in front "dig in," while processes of reorganization accompanied a phase of recuperation during the coming lull in the battle.

The same devoted offering of strong and willing men in the flush of aggressive manhood by the Kansans and Missourians of the 35th, on the left of the 28th, which had the heaviest casualty list of any division from September 26th to October 1st, was not to have the good fortune of such understanding direction. Kansas and Missouri took all their pride as well as their natural courage and hardihood into this battle. Their left flank was from the first on the heights to the east of the Aire in full view of the Forest edge and its escarpments. On the right they were swinging toward the heights west of Montfaucon. The particularly dense fog hugging the ground on their front in the first hour of their advance made the liaison between the battalions difficult from the start. The two formidable heights of Vauquois hill and the Rossignol Wood were masked by troops sweeping speedily by them on either side in brilliant fashion, and left to the battalions detailed for the purpose, which cleaned them up with thoroughgoing alacrity. Meanwhile the frontal line drove ahead against machine-gun fire in front and flanking artillery fire from the right until it was in the vicinity of Cheppy.

As we already know, there had been trouble immediately in Varennes, where the 35th was linked with the 28th. The 35th received both shells and machine-gun fire from the high ground of the town and from the heights which were firing down on the 28th. Both division reports speak of having taken Varennes, which is well spread on the river banks. There was room enough for the troops of both to operate, with plenty of work for both to do before their common efforts had cleared the ruins of their infestuous occupants. The tanks also had a part in this success. Wherever there was anything like favorable ground in that irregular landscape, they did valuable service; and they tried to pass through woods and across ravines which only sublime audacity would have attempted—and sometimes they succeeded. Their visibility at short range to the numerous enemy batteries made any part in the battle by them seem suicidal.

The formation for the attack was by brigades in column: that is, one of the two brigades in reserve behind the other that took the lead. On that first day, when a regiment of the frontal brigade was stopped by casualties, another was sent through it. The plan was to crowd in the eager men. It was their first big fight. They had impatiently trained for this chance. The individualism of these stalwart high-strung Middle Westerners was allowed full rein. To them a fight meant that you did not give the enemy any time to think; you forced the issue with smashing rights and vicious uppercuts at the start, a robust constitution receiving cheerfully and stoically any punishment inflicted as you sought a knockout.

Therefore flanking fire was only a call to pressing the enemy harder and having the business the sooner finished. There was no waiting for guns to come up, as Cheppy on the right was taken soon after Varennes on the left. Losses, particularly of senior officers, were becoming serious by this time; units, though scattered and intermingled in the fog, only wanted direction to go on. Having been reorganized and being supported by fresh battalions, the advance continued. By night the 35th's left was well north of Varennes, its right near VÉry, and the approaches to Charpentry had been gained. On that first day the 35th, fighting against flanking and frontal artillery and machine-gun fire, had made four miles in mastering the east bank of the trough of the Aire; but it had paid a price which was a tragic if splendid tribute to the courageous initiative of its men. The artillerists were working hectically to bridge the little streams for their pieces; that one-way bridge which two divisions were trying to use through Varennes congested the other traffic. According to the division report, instead of proper rations for the troops, there was an issue of fresh meat and vegetables with no means for cooking.

The divisional artillery was expected to be up by eight o'clock on the morning of the 27th to renew the attack, but higher authority could not wait on its support. In full realization of the strength of the enemy's artillery, Corps orders to advance at 5 A.M. must be obeyed, with only one battalion of light guns to protect the men in an endeavor that must be far more costly than yesterday's. The Kansans and Missourians were of the stock that can fight to a finish; and they were expected to fight to a finish. The 70th Brigade, whose units had already been engaged and had been all day under more or less fire and advancing behind the 69th, was put in front, with the 69th in close reserve, ready to take up the battle when the 70th had suffered too heavily.

Overnight the enemy had reinforced the commanding position of Charpentry, which was the keypoint of his line of defense against the 35th. It sent down gusts of machine-gun fire while the increased enemy artillery on both flanks played on the open fields of advance, where, after the attack slowed down, the men continued to spring up and charge, in the hope that they had found an opening, only to be met with machine-gun fire from unexpected quarters. Tanks having been brought up and reorganization effected, another general rush was made, which aroused such a torrent of fire that the infantry, without their shields for advance, could only seek what protection they could dig or find in gullies behind banks or in shell-holes.

The artillery, which had worked ceaselessly all night and day to get forward, was now arriving, and with its support a new advance, which crowded in more troops, was undertaken at 5.30 in the afternoon. The artillery silenced some of the machine-gun nests, though it could not reach the enemy battery positions; but by the grace of their undaunted determination and energy the Kansans and Missourians took both Charpentry and the town of Baulny. In the darkness some daring units pressed through the Montrebeau Wood, while the main line dug in near Baulny to secure what protection it could from the shells whose flashes illumined vigorous spading, which had an incentive in the vicious singing of the fragments.

It had been another costly day, and the night that followed was ghastly for the wounded. They were gathered from the field under incessant bursts of machine-gun fire; and when they were brought in, the crowded roads made their evacuation horribly slow. The struggle to force ammunition and supplies forward over the main road did not relax in the area behind the troops, where all through the night the German artillery, which had the approaches to Charpentry and Baulny perfectly registered, kept up a fire shrewdly calculated to block a movement every time it started.

All the artillery was now up to support the troops being re-formed for another attack at daybreak, which was preceded by a counter-attack of the enemy which was promptly repulsed. More open spaces than yesterday must be crossed in full view of the enfilading batteries, particularly those firing from the west bank of the Aire. Ground was gained all along the front: ground important for the terrible day's work that was to follow. While the wounded, suffering from exposure, were walking back or being carried back across the shelled fields and along the shelled roads, the survivors must spend the night in leaving nothing undone to insure the success of the next morning's attack, which was to capitalize every atom of vitality remaining in this hard-driven division. Again the men were short of regular rations; and the fresh beef and vegetables which were again forced upon them could not be cooked. It was raw fighting, indeed, on raw meat and raw potatoes which was expected of the 35th. Incidentally the divisional transport was short fourteen hundred horses.

The loss of officers in their gallant exposure to keep up the liaison of the units had continued severe. For this reason alone the 35th, which was having its first battle experience, was unprepared for a far less onerous task than that now assigned it. With nerve strength in place of physical strength, with will in place of adequate organization, the division was sent into a veritable alley, which could be swept by artillery fire from the Forest edge across the Aire as well as from the other flank and in front. The instant the attack began, the enemy guns concentrated with a pitiless accuracy and a volume of fire completely surpassing that of the other days. In places the advance was literally blasted to a standstill.

The village of Exermont which was the main goal was mercilessly exposed in that ravine where the enemy shell-fire had the play of a cataract through a gorge. Some men actually reached the village, but they could not remain there alive. Groups charging for what seemed cover only ran into more shell-bursts. The dead and wounded lay in "bunches" under the continuing blasts which disrupted organization, while officers in trying to restore it sacrificed themselves. There was no want of courage; but the division was undertaking the impossible. Every spurt of initiative was as futile as thrusting a finger into a stove door. Confused orders were further confused in transmission.

When night of the 29th came, there was nothing to do but for the 35th to withdraw, for lack of any means of supporting them, its exposed units from Montrebeau Wood and Exermont. The ravine could not be held until the guns commanding it were silenced and fresh troops in numbers were summoned. A willing horse had been driven to its death. The 35th's units had been crowded into the front line until the only reserves it had were men too exhausted from fighting to move. On the 30th a defensive position was organized. A battalion of the 82nd Division, brought up with a view to renewing the attack, met a killing barrage which warned commanders that advancing one fresh battalion was only throwing more cannon-fodder into the ravine.

Throughout the 30th the men of the 35th held their ground under continuous artillery fire, which could not keep many from falling asleep in their exhaustion; but they were awakened to retributive zeal by two German counter-attacks, their marksmanship being a warning to the enemy that though they had not the strength to advance they still knew how to shoot. On the night of the 30th the 35th was relieved by the veteran 1st Division. Gaunt and staggering, shadows of the sturdy figures which had advanced on the 26th, the survivors plodded back to rest billets, to find that in some quarters the view was held that the division had done badly. No more inconsiderate reflection upon brave men was ever engendered in the impulses of battle emotion, with its hasty judgment.

In an advance of over six miles the 35th had suffered 6,312 casualties. Nearly half of its infantry was dead on the field or in hospital. The other half was in a coma from fatigue. Every rod gained had been won by fighting against fire as baffling as it was powerful. To say that the 35th fought for five days as a division is hardly doing it justice. A division may be said to be fighting when only one brigade is in line while the other is resting. All the men of the 35th were fighting. There were soldiers who did not have five hours' sleep in that period of unbroken battle strain in the midst of the dead and dying. Only the powerful physique of the men, with their store of reserve energy which they drew on to the last fraction, enabled them to bear it as long as they did. Their courage and endurance and dash performed a mighty service in a most critical sector. Instead of being the object of any ungenerous reflections by captious pedants or commanders who did not know how to command, after they had given their generous all they should have been welcomed with a warmth of praise in keeping with their proud and justifiable consciousness that they had done their red-blooded best.