here the cutting may be
found? Can staggering men again survive the treacherous morass? It is
lighter now. We will pick our way better. But where is the cutting?
Chantrill and the Captain despair. Have we missed it in, the dark? Then
we are done for. Where is the "I" Co. detachment again? Lost? Here
Corporal Grahek, and you, Sgt. Getzloff, you old woodsmen from north
Michigan pines, scout around here and find the cutting and that rear
party. Who is it that you men are carrying?

No trace of the rear part of the column nor of the cutting! One thing
remains to do. We must risk a shout, though the Reds may hear.

"Danley! eeyohoh!"

"Yes, h-e-e-e-r-r-e on the c-u-t-t-i-n-g!"

Did ever the straight and narrow way seem so good. The column is soon
united again and the back trail despondingly begun. Daylight of a Sunday
morning aids our footsteps. We cross again the stream we had waded waist
deep in the pitch dark and wondered that no one had been drowned.

Zero hour arrives and we listen to the artillery of both sides and for
the rat-tat-tat of the Bolo machine guns when our forces move on the
bridgehead. We hurry on. The battle is joined. Pine woods roar and
reverberate with roar. By taking a nearer blazed trail we may come out
to the railway somewhere near the battle line.

At 8:40 a. m. we emerge from the woods near our armored train. At field
headquarters, Major Nichols, who in the thick of the battle has arrived
to relieve Major Young, orders every man at once to be made as
comfortable as possible. Men build fires and warm and dry their clammy
water-soaked feet, picture of which is shown in this volume. Bully and
tea and hard tack revive a good many. It is well they do, for the fight
is going against us and two detachments of volunteers from these men are
soon, to be asked for to go forward to the battle line.

Considerable detail has been given about this march of "I" and "M"
because writer was familiar with it, but a similar story might be told
of "H" in the swamps on the Onega, or of "K" or "L" and "M. G." at
Kodish, or of "A," "B," "C" or "D" on the River Fronts, and with equal
praise for the hardihood of the American doughboy hopelessly mired in
swamps and lost in the dense forests, baffled in his attempts because of
no fault of his own, but ready after an hour's rest to go at it again,
as in this case when a volunteer platoon went forward to support the
badly suffering line. The Red Guards composed of the Le