the bridge.
Lieut. Spitler came on with a machine gun and the position was
consolidated and held in spite of heavy shelling by the Bolo armored
trains and his desperate raids at night and in the morning, for the
purpose of destroying the bridge. His high explosive tore up the track
but did no damage to the bridge. His infantry recoiled from the Lewis
gun and machine gun fire of the Americans that covered the bridge and
its approaches.

The day's operations had been costly. The French had lost eight, killed
and wounded and missing. The Americans had lost four killed, fourteen
wounded, among whom were Lieuts. Lawrence Keith and James R. Donovan,
and five missing. Many of these casualties were suffered by the resolute
platoon at the bridge. There Lieut. Donovan was caught by machine gun
fire and a private by shrapnel from a searching barrage of the Bolos, as
was also a sergeant of "F" Company who was attached for observation. But
the eight others who were wounded, two of them mortally, owed their
unfortunate condition to the altogether unnecessary and ill-advised
attempt by Col. Sutherland to shell the bridge which was being held by
his own troops. He had the panicky idea that the Red Guards were coming
or going to come across that bridge and ordered the shrapnel which cut
up the platoon of "M" Company with its hail of lead instead of the Reds
who had halted 700 yards away and themselves were shelling the bridge
but to no effect. Not only that but when Col. Sutherland was informed
that his artillery was getting his own troops, he first asked on one
telephone for another quart of whisky and later called up his artillery
officer and ordered the deadly fire to lengthen range. This was observed
by an American soldier, Ernest Roleau, at Verst 466, who acted as
interpreter and orderly in Sutherland's headquarters that day.

The British officer sadly retired to his Blue Car headquarters at Verst
466, thinking the Reds would surely recapture the bridge. But Major
Nichols in command at field headquarters at Verst 461 thought
differently. When the order came over the wire for him to withdraw his
Americans from the bridge, this infantry reserve officer whose
previously most desperate battle, outside of a melee between the Bulls
and Bears on Wall Street, had been to mashie nib out of a double
bunkered trap on the Detroit Country Club golf course, as usual with
him, took "plenty of sand." He shoved the order to one side till he
heard