The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-08

l 1 ing. And here is what he said:
 "The Americans went into the line after a hard march. The Fritzes un- doubtedly had no inkling that the at tack was to be made At midnight Wednesday we were sent forward to lie out, ready for an advance at S:10 o'clock Thursday morning.
 SLEPT BEFORE BATTLE Many of our boys were tired when they reached the positions and, despite the, fact that they were just embarking on the biggest adventure of their lives "a leap into the unknown-they threw themselves on the ground and slept soundly It was an encouraging sight to us for it meant that the men were not iumpy. They never did show any sign of nerves, as a matter of fact For us officers there was no sleep during that three hours wait. There were conferences to be held with the Australians, and then, too, the respon- sibility was weighing heavily on us. We knew that our lads would come through clean, but we could not help being a bit anxious.
 COOL AUSTRALIANS We had to admire the coolness of the Australian officers, who told stories and laughed as if nothing was going to hap pen, though we Americans knew that shortly before the kickoff the gunners would put down a barrage which would be the signal for all hands on the job fap r,,it, hnfo tha ho 1cy6 was due the allied artillery opened with harassing fire and We American off cers were out among our men hot-foot to keep them steady, fearing they might mistake this for the barrage. "Then came the barrage and we never drea amed there could be such gunfire. Ii was tremendous. The gunners certainly did wonderful job.
 INFANTRY STARTS "The infantry started to advance. My men were headed for Hamel village and our first trouble was encountered in a broad belt of barbed wire in front ot the Boche forward line of defenses The | tanks had opened the way through most of this, but in spots some of our men were held up for little.
 T saw a funny thing there. One oi my corporals, who had been guard officer in a penitentary and who has a reputation for being a hard customer in a fight, got hung up in the wire. lie had no cutters and sat down the ground and started pulling the stuff ou, of his legs, barb by barb.
 "A Boche got a machine on hin and was making things hot, but the cor poral kept pulling the wire, mean time roaring curses at the Huns. FRAMED A TRICK" "'Frame q trick like this on a white man, will you? Let me out of here and | I'll show you
 These were some things I heard him yell, with a lot more less complimentary 1 He finally got out but his uniform 1 looked as if he had been run through threshing machine What he did to the | Boche after that was plenty. | About this time a German shell eX- i ploded near us and two of my men went | hurling through the air. I thought sure the poor fellows were done for, but ir minute I heard one of them call over | to his pal:
 1 .' Hey, John, are you dead?'
 Prom the churned-up ground near 1 the response came No; are you? | We got through the barbed wire very well and reached the Boche front line trenches They were thinly held and Vt | cleared them out with bombs and rifles 1 on the jump. We hardly stopped here i at all but passed over toward the viii | lage.
 TANKS. "ONLY HELPING" /, You understand that when I speak ol 1 we am talking about the Yankees ant ] the Australians, for we were only help l ing in the show.
 | ..The support trenches, which had dug outs were more strongly held, but WV
 cut our way through without much diff ] ficulty. A lot of Huns were killed or cap
 tured by this time. From the direction of Hamel the German machine guns ant rifles were working hard and there wa plenty of stuff coming our way,
 CLEANED OUT HAMEL
 When we reached Hamel we found { lot of dugouts filed with Boches ant their snipers up trees with machine guns We cleaned them all out systematically 1 "Cne of our sergeants, with an Ameri can private and an Australian, cam' upon a dugout containing four German officers and some men, The officers start ed to come up and one of them pulled a revolver. The sergeant shot hin through the head and two of the othe officers who started to fight were Killed The rest surrendered.
 "In another dusout one of our ser geants and three privates captured It Germans Just to the lett of flame an Australian corporal and two pri- 1 yates cleared out another dugout con- taining numerous Germans