"You'd better either stay here or go to a hospital; you're a sick man," said the medical officer, but Summerton disregarded the advice, went to the company and assumed command and led the first wave in the assault on Hill 244 next morning. He actually was the first to the top of the hill, and performed the feat under the eyes of the brigade commander, although he was almost reeling from his illness and his wounds. Not only that, but after gaining the crest he continued to lead the attack until he got a rifle bullet through the shoulder, which put him out of the action.
The regiment came next against Chene Tondu Ridge, and here the whole division came to a pause. It took just four days to reduce that stronghold. It was a case where nothing could be gained and much lost by trying brute force and speed, so it was cleared of Germans by a regular course of siege operations in the tactics with which the Pennsylvanians now were so familiar.
Some men spotted the German firing positions and concentrated their streams of bullets on them, while others crept forward to protected posts. These in turn set up a peppery fusillade and the others crept forward. So it went on, steadily up hill, steadily gaining, until, on the evening of the fourth day, the tired doughboys of the 112th lay down and slept on the crest of the ridge in token of their victory. They had redeemed it for France.
These were the chief defenses which had to be overcome before the troops came to Chatel-Chehery itself. There much the same kind of fighting as at Apremont took place, although not on so fierce and extensive a scale.
CHAPTER XX
Toward Hunland
Near Chatel-Chehery, in the depth of the woods, the soldiers found a hunting lodge which prisoners said had been occupied for a long time by the German Crown Prince. They said that, unmindful of the great tragedy such a short distance away and for which he was at least partly responsible, he entertained parties of gay friends at the lodge and went boar hunting in the forest. That he was more or less successful was attested by several large boars' heads on the walls.
In the course of their progress up the valley, our men had captured a railroad which had been part of the German system of communications. With it were taken seven locomotives and 268 cars. The locomotives were of odd construction, to American eyes, having a big flywheel over the boiler, and on each a fanciful name was painted in German on the side of the cab. Locomotives and cars were camouflaged to make them blend with the trees, bushes and ferns of the forest. An effort had been made to wreck them, but four were easily repaired and in a few hours after they were seized men of the 103d Engineers had the railroad running full blast and performing valuable service.