"One machine-gun section in the village was reduced to two men—Monfort Wyckoff and John Flynn. Their gun jammed and Flynn kept the Germans off with his revolver while Wyckoff got the quick-firer going again. They held their ground to the end. Two other men, unable to get a sight at the Germans from their trench, climbed the parapet and stood there erect, firing their automatics from the shoulder.
"Two companies of infantry, without dugouts to shelter them, held their ground on the right of the position through a heavy artillery preparation and kept the enemy from bringing up reenforcements throughout the fight. Meanwhile, in the center at Xivray and on the left, the machine gunners did the rest.
"The enemy's plan, according to prisoners, was to force the village, destroy the defense works, make the place untenable, and take prisoners. The effort was well organized and might have succeeded but for the work of the quick-firers.
"The Germans had lost a third of their 600 men when growing daylight impaired the effectiveness of their smoke screen, and they began to retire. The fifty-odd unwounded Americans left out of 225 went over the top after them.
"Two hundred is a conservative estimate of the German losses, for our men buried forty-seven of them on the field, and there were more corpses in the tall grass facing the position out of reach. Thus the Germans lost nearly as many men as they had facing them during the fight."
CHAPTER XLVI
ON THE CHEMIN-DES-DAMES
As early as February, 1918, American batteries were heard on the French lines east of Rheims, where American gunners were apparently under training by the French before going into action on their own front. An opportunity came to them to show their quality when the French determined to suppress a German salient which dipped into the French position between Tahure and Butte du Mesnil, in the Champagne. It was a difficult operation owing to the nature of the ground, which formed a basinlike depression, into which the Germans could pour the fire of their concentrated guns from the surrounding heights.
Artillery did the main work. American gunners took part in a six-hour bombardment of the salient on a front of a mile, and so thoroughly were the German defenses demolished that it took the French assaulting troops only an hour to gain all the objectives in view. Afterward the American gunners, with their French comrades, extended their range, developing an effective barrage to prevent counterattacks on the newly won ground. "American batteries gave very effective support," said the French communiqué in reporting this successful raid.
About the same time American units appeared on the Aisne fighting front in the vicinity of the famous Chemin-des-Dames. They had been detailed there for training purposes; but their location was not revealed by General Pershing until the Germans themselves knew of their presence. They had been there weeks before their presence became known. Suddenly ordered from their billets, they entrained to the railhead, and passed through mile after mile of shell-scarred, desolate ground and through several great piles of stones and débris which once were villages but now had not a single house standing. They took up their positions without a hitch to the music of roaring guns, both friendly and hostile, their flashes stabbing the blackness of the night, first here and then there, as far as the eye could see.