Germans
were striving desperately to hold. The second phase of the Battle of the
Meuse-Argonne was on.

As the fog rose the American "jumped off" down the wooded slope and the
Germans opened fire from three directions. With artillery they pounded
the hillside. Machine guns savagely sprayed the trees under which the
Americans were moving. At one point, where the hill makes a steep
descent, the American line seemed to fade away as it attempted to pass.

This slope, it was found, was being swept by machine guns on the crest
of the hill to the left which faced down the valley. The Germans were
hastily "planting" other machine guns there.

The Americans showered that hill top with bullets, but the Germans were
entrenched.

The sun had now melted the mist and the sky was cloudless. From the pits
the Germans could see the Americans working their way through the
timber.

To find a place from which the Boche could be knocked away from those
death-dealing machine guns and to stop the digging of "fox holes" for
new nests, a non-commissioned officer and sixteen men went out from the
American line. All of them were expert rifle shots who came from the
support platoon of the assault troops on the left.

Using the forest's undergrowth to shield them, they passed unharmed
through the bullet-swept belt which the Germans were throwing around
Hill No. 223, and reached the valley. Above them was a canopy of lead.
To the north they heard the heavy cannonading of that part of the
battle.

When they passed into the valley they found they were within the range
of another battalion of German machine guns. The Germans on the hill at
the far end of the valley were lashing the base of No. 223.

For their own protection against the bullets that came with the whip of
a wasp through the tree-tops, the detachment went boldly up the enemy's
hill before them. On the hillside they came to an old trench, which had
been used in an earlier battle of the war. They dropped into it.

Moving cautiously, stopping to get their bearings from the sounds of the
guns above them, they walked the trench in Indian file. It led to the
left, around the shoulder of the hill, and into the deep dip of a valley
in the rear.

Germans were on the hilltop across that valley. But the daring of the
Americans protected them. The Germans were guarding the valleys and the
passes and they were not looking for enemy in the shadow of the barrels
of German guns.

As the tr