the town. A few civilians were scattered through the town, living in the
cellars, the rest having fled at the German approach. We were ordered to
put our guns in the very front-line trench for the reason that the
opposing trenches being so close together, it was impossible for the
guns to do justice to themselves without inflicting serious casualties
on our own men. To make our work as noiseless as possible, we took a
number of old rubber tires, cut them in strips and wrapped them around
the gun wheels with hay wire; this facilitated both the movement of the
guns and the preservation of silence.

We again had the honor of being the sacrifice battery for the
division--in other words, having the profound pleasure of going
heavenward, or in the other direction, before any of the others, for the
purpose of working out the plan of action by the Command. We got the
guns into position under cover of night, and thoroughly camouflaged
them with grass and tree branches. We did the job so artistically that
the birds would come and chatter and sing immediately over the guns when
they were not telling their tale of love to Fritz.

Out in front of our guns was a small ridge or embankment, gradually
sloping up to a height of twenty feet and extending east and west for a
distance of three or four hundred yards. This rising piece of ground was
a decided obstacle to our progress and it was ordered mined for the
purpose of leveling it. The engineers attended to the task. It turned
out that Fritz also had mined the ridge in order to blow our sector
skyward.

The stage was set and the play started at 5:30 in the afternoon. Our
orders were to blow holes in the parapet wire which ran in a zigzag
direction every way out in front, for the purpose of enabling the