Page:The North Carolina Historical Review - Volume 1, Number 1.pdf/55

Rh in front of Paris. This Division had gone through some maneuvers in liason very unsatisfactorily, and General Pershing had ordered them to spend the next week working on the problem. The following week they went through the same problem again very creditably. They had hardly finished before the Division was ordered to the front line trenches. A machine gun battalion was assigned a sector which the Major thought was in an out of the way place and that he had been assigned to it simply to get him out of the way. He found his place, arranged to set up his machine guns, and then noticed about 600 yards away a column of troops coming down a hill. He saw that they were Germans and called his captains together and they arranged to fire on them. The column turned towards them and were still coming down the hill, so the major held his fire until the column was within 250 yards of his machine guns, when he opened fire on them with twenty-four guns. (This was open warfare). It was dusk and they did not find out the full extent of the attack until next morning. Then over 1,000 dead were counted. The wounded had been removed during the night. It was estimated that there probably were 7,000 in the column. The attack was broken completely.

The French had only assigned a very small area to this Division, but after this effort it was increased and soon this Division was holding a sector three times as big as had been held by the French Division. A small piece of wood had balked the French for days and they had had a Division nearly broken up in attacking it, without any results. They had sent for siege guns and were waiting for them to be brought up before making another attack on the woods. The C. O. of the Third Division requested that the wood be included in his sector, which the French very gladly acceded to. The Staff Officer of the Third Division had studied the map thoroughly and found that a sunken road extended along the left flank of the wood and offered a good opportunity to flank the wood. Plans were made and while the woods were being shelled, a battalion of the Third Division went out this road and got in behind the wood. At a given signal the fire from our lines ceased and the battalion charged with fixed bayonets. They cleaned out the wood,