of liaison in the thickets of the wood, and
because of the almost impossible task of directing it in conjunction
with the advancing lines, the artillery preparation for the attack was
necessarily brief. At five o'clock to the dot the Marines moved out from
the woods in perfect order, and started across the wheat fields in four
long waves. It was a beautiful sight, these men of ours going across
those flat fields toward the tree clusters beyond from which the Germans
poured a murderous machine gun fire.

The woods were impregnated with nests of machine guns, but our advance
proved irresistible. Many of our men fell, but those that survived
pushed on through the woods, bayoneting right and left and firing as
they charged. So sweeping was the advance that in some places small
isolated units of our men found themselves with Germans both before and
behind them.

The enemy put up a stubborn resistance on the left, and it was not until
later in the evening that this part of the line reached the northeast
edge of the woods, after it had completely surrounded a most populous
machine gun nest which was located on a rocky hill. During the fighting
Colonel Catlin was wounded and Captain Laspierre, the French liaison
officer, was gassed, two casualties which represented a distinct blow to
the brigade, but did not hinder its further progress.

On the right Lieutenant Robertson, with twenty survivors out of his
entire platoon, emerged from the terrific enemy barrage and took the
town of Bouresches at the point of the bayonet. Captain Duncan,
receiving word that one Marine company, with a determination to engage
the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, had gone two hundred yards in advance,
raced forward on the double quick with the 96th Marine Company, and was
met by a terrific machine gun barrage from both sides of Bouresches.

Lieutenant Robertson, looking back, saw Duncan and the rest of his
company going down like flies as they charged through the barrage. He
saw Lieutenant Bowling get up from the ground, his face white with pain,
and go stumbling ahead with a bullet in his shoulder. Duncan, carrying a
stick and with his pipe in his mouth, was mowed down in the rain of
lead. Robertson saw Dental Surgeon Osborne pick Duncan up. With the aid
of a Hospital Corps man, they had just gained the shelter of some trees
when a shell wiped all three of them out.

In the street fighting that ensued in Bouresches, Lieutenant Robertson's
orderly