Judsonia weekly advance., 1918-05-08

chance if the Germans only knew But the shells continued to drop in front of us and on either side, but none landed among us, and after waiting there for three hours, expecting to be blown to bits any second, we finally moved for ward. Just as we left the copse, from behind us, up over a ridge, came stream of galloping horses.
 It's the cavalry" someone shouted, but soon I made out limbers and field guns.
 They galloped past us, going like mad, took up a position to our right, swung into position, unlimbered, and in two minutes were blazing away. It was a thrilling sight.
 Torn by Shells. In going forward we went around the end of the larger wood in front of us, over ground that was torn to bits preceded, over another edge, across a valley, and under the crest of a hill. And here we found the tanks going over the top of the hill to take up their position. At this point we were still about a mile from the front line. At this place I opened up an aid post under the crest of the hill to take care of what wounded came in while we were getting into position. I looked back across the valley we had just trayersed.
 Shrapnel was bursting in the air, shells were whizzing overhead, and our guns behind me were belching forth the fire. The noise was deafening. railroad ran through the valley and an engine pulling a couple of flat cars was going by. A couple of sol diers were sitting on the rear truck swinging their feet shell burst on the track and only missed the last car about fifteen yards. Neither man was hit and the traifl went blithely on. By this time it was getting along toward evening" the sun was sinking in the west, and finally went down a great ball of fire. At the time, l re- member, I noticed its color. It was blood red and had sinister look. Was it my imagination, or might 1t have been a premonition? At any rate, I shall never forget the color of the sun as 1t set that night at the end of the first day of probably one of the great est battles in history. It certainly didn't look good to me.
 The drumming of the guns contin- ued, twilight gradually deepened into night, the signalers stopped their wig wagging and took up their flash sig nals, fog dropped down on us and put the lights out of business, and when we left to go forward under the cover of darkness they were busy put ting out their telephone lines-signal- | CTS and runners don't have an easy l time.
 Shell Dump Goes Up. Behind us shell landed in an am- | intuition dump and it went up with roar then the rifle ammunition started | going off like great bunch of fire crackers, and great tongues of flame lit up the sky.
 l It is reported that the Germans had
 broken through our line and we were | to cOunter-attack in the morning. We l got into positions without single
 casualty. I opened an aid post in an old dugout and settled down to sleep
 until morning. You may think it fun
 ny that one could sleep under such
 conditions. but I had been up since
 5 80, had tramped about six or seven
 miles, had had rather trying day
 and was dog tired.
 | So l settled down on the rough plank
 floor and was soon asleep. l must
 have been asleep a couple of hours when a runner came from headQuar- l ters and told us we were to move off
 immediately. looked at my watch and | 1t was 1 80 a. m. on the second day. | We went back to the railroad, fol
 lowed it around to a position some six
 miles to the north of us landing there
 about 4 in the morning and f1opped down on the floor of some abandoned
 huts to wait further orders. Our or
 ders came along about 9 o'clock. We
 marched up across the open prairie,
 the sun shining and it was really hot. 1 Just like some of the warm days we
 get the last of March at home. In
 going forward it was necessary l for us to march seventy-five yards in
 front of three batteries of field guns.
 There are six guns to battery. They shoot an eighteen-pound shell and
 while we were there each gun was
 shooting twice to the minute. You
 can imagine the racket when l tell
 you that the discharge of one gun can
 be heard about four miles. In addi- l tion the Boche was trying to knock
 out this battery and he was dropping
 his six inch shells little too close for | comfort