al the locations of the guns.
Nightfall approached with a quiet that was deadly ominous of impending
events.

At nine o'clock the enemy formations lunged forward to the attack. Their
dense masses charged down the streets leading toward the river. They
sang as they advanced. The orders, as revealed in documents captured
later, came straight from the high command and demanded the acquisition
of a foothold on the south bank at all costs. They paid the costs, but
never reached the south bank.

The American machine gun fire was withering. Time after time, in the
frequent rushes throughout the night, the remnants of enemy masses would
reach sometimes as far as the centre of the big bridge, but none of them
succeeded in reaching the south bank. The bridge became carpeted with
German dead and wounded. They lay thick in the open streets near the
approaches. By morning their dead were piled high on the bridge and
subsequent rushes endeavoured to advance over the bodies of their fallen
comrades. In this battle of the bridges and the streets, our men showed
a courage and determination which aroused the admiration of the French
officers, who were aware by this time that forty-eight hours before
these same American soldiers had seen battle for the first time.

Our machine gunners turned the northern bank of the river into a No
Man's Land. Their vigilance was unrelenting and every enemy attempt to
elude it met with disaster. There were serious American casualties
during that terrific fire, but they were nothing in comparison with the
thousand or more German dead that dotted the streets and clogged the
runways of the big bridge in piles. The last night of the fight enormous
charges of explosive were placed beneath the bridge and discharged.

The bridge was destroyed. High into the air were blown bits of stone,
steel, timber, debris, wreckage and the bodies of German dead, all to
fall back into the river and go bobbing up and down in the waters of the
Marne.

Thus did the Americans save the day at Chateau-Thierry, but it became
immediately necessary for the French high command to call upon our young
forces for another great effort. In response to this call, the Second
United States Division, including one brigade of the United States
Marines, the 5th and 6th Regiments, started for the front. The division
was then occupying support positions in the vicinity of Gisors behind
the Picardy line. At four o'clock on the morning of May 31s