The company had lost two sergeants, one corporal, and thirteen men, coming down that short stretch! We mustered but forty-five men, all told. One, Sergeant Terisien, had for four months commanded my section, the "American Section," but was transferred to the fourth section. From where we rested we could see him slowly descending the hill, bareheaded and with his right hand clasping his left shoulder. He had been severely wounded in the head, and his left arm was nearly torn off at the shoulder. Poor devil! He was a good comrade and a good soldier. Just before the war broke out he had finished his third enlistment in the Legion, and was in line for a discharge and pension when he died.
Looking up the awful slope we had just descended, we could see the bodies of our comrades, torn and mangled and again and again kicked up into the air by the shells. For two days and nights the hellish hail continued to beat upon that blood-soaked slope, until we finally captured the Butte de Souain and forced an entire regiment of Saxons to the left of the butte to capitulate.
Again we assembled in column of fours, and this time began the climb uphill. Just then I happened to think of the blow I had received under the jaw, and feeling of the spot, discovered a slight wound under my left jaw-bone. Handing my rifle to a man, I pressed slightly upon the sore spot and pulled a steel splinter out of the wound. A very thin, long sliver of steel it was, half the diameter of a dime and not more than a dime's thickness, but an inch and a half long. The metal was still hot to the touch. The scratch continued bleeding freely, and I did not bandage it at the time because I felt sure of needing my emergency dressing farther along.
Up near the crest of the hill we halted in an angle of the woods and lay down alongside the One Hundred and Seventy-second Regiment of infantry. They had made the attack in this direction on the twenty-fifth, but had been severely checked at this point. Infantry and machine-gun fire sounded very close, and lost bullets by the hundreds flicked through the branches overhead. The One Hundred and Seventy-second informed us that a battalion of the Premier Étranger had entered the forest and was at that moment storming a position to our immediate left. Through the trees showed lights, brighter than day, cast from hundreds of German magnesium candles shot into the air.
Our officers were grouped with those of the other regiment, and after a very long conference they separated, each to his command. Our captain called the officers and subalterns of the company together, and in terse sentences explained to us our positions and the object of the coming assault. It was to be a purely local affair, it seemed, and the point was the clearing of the enemy from the hill we were on. On a map drawn to scale he pointed out the lay of the land.
It looked to me like a hard proposition. Imagine to yourself a toothbrush about a mile long and three eighths to one half mile wide. The back is formed by the summit of the hill, densely wooded, and the bristles are represented by four little ridges rising from the valley we had just crossed, each one crowned with strips of forest and uniting with the main ridges at right angles. Between each two lines of bristles are open spaces, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty metres wide. We of the second regiment were to deliver the assault parallel with the bristles and stretching from the crest down to the valley.
The other column was to make a demonstration from our left, running a general course at right angles to ours. The time set was eight o'clock at night.
Returning to our places, we informed the men of what they were in for. While we were talking we noticed a group of men come from the edge of the woods and form into company formation, and we could hear them answer to the roll-call. I went over and peered at them. On their coat-collars I saw the gilt "No. 1." It was the Premier Étranger.
As the roll-call proceeded, I wondered. The sergeant was deciphering with difficulty the names from his little carnet, and response after response was, "Mort." Once in a while the answer changed to, "Mort sur le champ d'honneur," or a brief "Tombé." There were twenty-two men in line, not counting the sergeant and a corporal, who in rear of the line supported himself precariously on two rifles which served him as crutches. Two more groups appeared back of this one, and the same proceeding was repeated. As I stood near the second group I could just catch the responses of the survivors. "Duvivier": "Présent."—"Selonti": "Présent."—"Boismort": "Tombé."—"Herkis": "Mort."—"Carney": "Mort."—"MacDonald": "Présent."—"Farnsworth": "Mort sur le champ d'honneur," responded MacDonald. Several of the men I had known, Farnsworth among them. One officer, a second-lieutenant, commanded the remains of the battalion. Seven hundred and fifty men, he informed me, had gone in an hour ago, and less than two hundred came back.
