t to end until the "cease firing" signal sounded
for the end of the world's greatest war.

It was on the evening of May 30, after a day dedicated to the memory of
their comrades who had fallen in the training days and in the Verdun
sector, that the 5th and 6th Regiments and the 6th Machine Gun
Battalion, United States marines, each received the following orders:--

Advance information official received that this regiment will move at
10 P.M. 30 May by bus to new area. All trains shall be loaded at once
and arrangements hastened. Wagons, when loaded, will move to Serans to
form train.

All through the night there was fevered activity among the marines.
Then, the next morning, the long trains of camions, busses, and trucks,
each carrying its full complement of United States marines, went
forward on a road which at one place wound within less than ten miles
of Paris, toward Meaux and the fighting line.

Through the town of Meaux went the long line of camions and to the
village of Montriel-aux-Lions, less than four miles from the rapidly
advancing German line. On this trip the camions containing the
Americans were the only traffic traveling in the direction of the
Germans; everything else was going the other way--refugees, old men and
women, small children, riding on every conceivable conveyance, many
trudging along the side of the road driving a cow or calf before them,
all of them covered with the white dust which the camion caravan was
whirling up as it rolled along; along that road only one organization
was advancing, the United States marines.

At last, their destination reached early on the morning of June 2, they
disembarked, stiff and tired after a journey of more than seventy-two
miles, but as they formed their lines and marched onward in the
direction of the line they were to hold they were determined and
cheerful. That evening the first field message from the Fourth Brigade
to Major General Omar Bundy, commanding the 2d Division, went forward:--

Second Battalion, 6th Marines, in line from Le Thiolet through
Clarembauts Woods to Triangle to Lucy. Instructed to hold line. First
Battalion, 6th marines, going into line from Lucy through Hill 142.
Third Battalion in support at La Voie du Chatel, which is also the post
command of the 6th Marines. Sixth Machine Gun Battalion distributed at
line.

Meanwhile the 5th Regiment was moving into line, machine guns were
advancing, and the artillery taking it