"It is our good fortune that we are equipped to receive and entertain numerous guests and that we shall be able to provide quarters for these gentlemen. They will find comfort in the thought that they are rendering their almighty President, Mr. Wilson, valuable services, inasmuch as it is asserted he is anxious to obtain reliable information concerning conditions and sentiments in belligerent countries.
"As Americans are accustomed to travel in luxury and comfort, we assume that these advance arrivals merely represent couriers for larger numbers to come. We are sure the latter will come and be gathered in by us. At home they believe they possess the biggest and most colossal everything, but such establishments as we have here they have not seen.
"Look here, my boy, here is the big firm of Hindenburg & Co., with which you want to compete. Look at its accomplishments and consider whether it would not be better to haul down your sign and engage in some other line. Perhaps your boss, Wilson, will reconsider his newest line of business before we grab off more of his young people."
A salient of the American position occupied by a small detachment had been successfully raided by the Germans before daybreak, resulting in three Americans killed, several wounded, and a dozen captured or missing. The Teutons started a heavy barrage fire, which isolated the salient, so that help could not reach the troops, nor could they retire, and thus had the besieged men at the mercy of their superior force. The Americans fought obstinately until they were overwhelmed. They had only been in the trenches a few days and were part of the second contingent who had entered them for training under actual war conditions. They succeeded in capturing a German prisoner, and inflicting casualties; but the latter did not become known as the enemy, in fleeing the trench, took their dead and wounded with them.
After shelling the barbed-wire front of the trenches, dropping many high-explosive missiles of large caliber, the Germans directed a heavy artillery fire to cover all the adjacent territory, including the passage leading to the trenches, thereby effecting a complete barrage of the salient front and rear. Soon after the enemy, exceeding two hundred in number, rushed the breaches and wire entanglements on each side of the salient, lifting the barrage in the forefield to permit their passage.
It was an elaborate encircling bombardment to achieve a trifling object. An American platoon, numbering only nineteen men, were corraled by a heavy fire from 77's and 115's, which searched the whole line of trenches communicating with the salient where they were isolated. The French, who had only recently vacated the position to make way for the Americans, estimated that the German shells expended exceeded eight thousand.
With the raising of the frontal barrage, the German raiders advanced. They were composed of storm troops, volunteers, machine gunners, artillerymen, pioneers to destroy the wire entanglements, and stretcher bearers to carry off their casualties. They had gathered round a group of ruined farm buildings some seven hundred yards from the American trenches, armed with grenades, revolvers, trench knives, and rifles. They followed, in columns of fours, a tape across no-man's-land laid out by leaders who had previously been over the ground. Advancing across a swampy ravine toward the salient, they penetrated the gaps in the American wire entanglements, and a number reached the trenches at the rear of their barrage. The Americans were thus cut off from behind. Other raiders stayed outside the trenches to protect those who entered them and to shoot any Americans who appeared above the parapet. The trenches were stormed right and left of the salient, one party clearing them as they proceeded, the other invading the dugouts for prisoners.
The darkness of the trenches veiled what next happened. After the Germans had completed their work and retired, an American trooper, private Enright, was found with his throat cut from ear to ear on the top of the parapet. While fighting a German in front of him he appeared to have been attacked from behind by another armed with a trench knife. A second trooper, private Hay, lay dead in the trench, and outside a dugout was the body of Corporal Gresham.
In the confusion some of the American troops mistook the Germans for their own comrades, and paid for their error. Corporal Gresham, for example, was the sentry at a dugout door when three men advanced toward him. Supposing them to be Americans he shouted:
"Don't shoot! I'm an American."