had our range
to a "T." Three men lying in a shallow trench near me were blown to
bits.

I went to the left of the line and found eight wounded men in a shell
hole. I went back to Cates' hole and three shells landed near them. We
thought they were killed, but they were not hit. You could hear men
calling for help in the wheat fields. Their cries would get weaker and
weaker and die out. The German planes were thick in the air; they were
in groups of from three to twenty. They would look us over and then we
would get a pounding. One of our planes got shot down; he fell about a
thousand feet, like an arrow, and hit in the field back of us. The tank
exploded and nothing was left.

We had a machine gun officer with us and at six a runner came up and
reported that Sumner was killed. He commanded the machine-gun company
with us. He was hit early in the fight by a bullet, I hear; I can get no
details. At the start he remarked: "This looks easy--they do not seem to
have much art." Hughes' headquarters were all shot up. Turner lost a
leg.

Well, we just lay there all through the hot afternoon.

It was great--a shell would land near by and you would bounce in your
hole.

As twilight came, we sent out water parties for the relief of the
wounded. Then we wondered if we would get relieved. At 9 o'clock we got
a message congratulating us and saying the Algerians would take over at
midnight. We then began to collect our wounded. Some had been evacuated
during the day, but at that, we soon had about twenty on the field near
us. A man who had been blinded wanted me to hold his hand. Another,
wounded in the back, wanted his head patted, and so it went; one man got
up on his hands and knees. I asked him what he wanted. He said, "Look at
the full moon," then fell dead. I had him buried, and all the rest I
could find. All the time bullets sung and we prayed that shelling would
not start until we had our wounded on top.

The Algerians came up at midnight and we pushed out. They went over at
daybreak and got all shot up. We made the relief under German flares and
the light from a burning town.

We went out as we came, through the gulley and town, the latter by now
all in ruins. The place was full of gas, so we had to wear our masks. We
pushed on to the forest and fell down in our tracks and slept all day.
That afternoon a German plane got a balloon and the observer jumped and
landed in a high tree. It was some job getting him down. T