There were calls to surrender, but no acceptances. The fighting became hand-to-hand with bayonet and gun butt. The defenders fought on in the hope that assistance soon would arrive from the American artillery.
But the Germans had planned the raid well. Their first barrage cut all telephone wires leading back from our front lines and the signal rocket which one of the men in the listening post had fired into the air, had been smothered in the dense mist. That rocket had called for a defensive barrage from American artillery and when no answer came to it, a second one was fired, but that also was snuffed out by the fog.
The net result of the raid was that the Germans had captured one of our wounded men and had thereby identified the organisation opposing them as the First Regular Division of the United States Army, composed of the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Regular U. S. Infantry Regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Regular U. S. Army Field Artillery. The division was under the command of Major General Robert Lee Bullard.
In the days and weeks that followed, the daily exchange of shells on the sector increased to two and three times the number it had been before our men arrived there. There were nightly patrols in No Man's Land and several instances where these patrols met in the dark and engaged one another with casualties on both sides.
One night a little over a month later—the early morning of March 4th, to be exact—it was my privilege to witness from an exceptional vantage point, the first planned and concentrated American artillery action against the enemy. The German lines selected for this sudden downpour of shell, comprised two small salients jutting out from the enemy's positions in the vicinity of the ruined village of Lahayville, in the same sector.
In company with an orderly who had been despatched as my guide, I started from an artillery battalion headquarters shortly before midnight, and together we made our way up the dark muddy road that led through the dense Bois de la Reine to the battery positions. Half an hour's walk and O'Neil, the guide, led me off the road into a darker tunnel of overlaced boughs where we stumbled along on the ties of a narrow gauge railroad that conveyed heavy shells from the road to the guns. We passed through several gun pits and stopped in front of a huge abri built entirely above ground.
Its walls and roof must have been between five and seven feet thick and were made from layers of logs, sandbags, railroad iron and slabs of concrete reinforced with steel. It looked impenetrable.
"Battery commander's headquarters," O'Neil said to me as we entered a small hot room lighted by two oil lamps and a candle. Three officers, at two large map tables, were working on sheets of figures. Two wooden bunks, one above the other, and two posts supporting the low ceiling completed the meagre furnishings of the room. A young officer looked up from his work, O'Neil saluted, and addressed him.
"The Major sent me up with this correspondent. He said you could let him go wherever he could see the fun and that you are not responsible for his safety." O'Neil caught the captain's smile at the closing remark and withdrew. The captain showed me the map.
"Here we are," he said, indicating a spot with his finger, "and here's what we are aiming at to-night. There are two places you can stay to see the fun. You can stay in this shelter and hear the sound of it, or you can go up a little further front to this point, and mount the platform in our observation tree. In this abri you are safe from splinters and shrapnel but a direct hit would wipe us out. In the tree you are exposed to direct hits and splinters from nearby bursts but at least you can see the whole show. It's the highest point around here and overlooks the whole sector."