The Greeneville daily sun. (Greeneville, Tenn.) 1918-1920, 1919-01-21

! ed OH n SQuad-coiumD lOfmaLion--
that is, the coruoral of the squad
leading off, followed by the men Of
his squad in single file.
There was one wave Of the infant
~ in front Of us, and we were to fol
low them through the attack, In this
manner we went forward, and had
only gone for a couple Of hundred
yards, when ! saw two men 20 down
in front Of me, one with his head
blown off and the other almost conf
pletely cue in-two BY "A shell. Both
of these poor fellows were killed by
the same shell. After little more
advancing this had got to be an old
thing to US, and began to see why
Sherman gave war the name he did
We had passed the German front
line by now, and were travelling over
a rolling kind of ground There was
so much noise we could not hear any
thing, SO | did not notice that | had
only one man of my squad with me
until we had gone some little dis
lance, and then it was | noticed it
He and | went back to hunt the re-
mainder of uor squad, for knew no
shell had hit close enough to have
killed the entire squad without my
knowing it, AT last we came upon
them in trench some distance back
where they had got lost in the smoke
and had stopped After telling them
a few things ] had on my mind at
chat time we again started forward
and had no further trouble from that
source.
Pretty soon we were again held
up by barbed-wire entanglements and
| dropped down into a trench sol
things to clear up, Would probably
have been there yet but for the tank
that wanted to go through, ard it
didn't seem to care or even know
that there was any barbed wire
around there, for it rumbled on
through wire, trenches and anything
else that came in its path. Every
sime we got held up by machine gun
ire or wire, it was the tanks that
came forward and cleaned things up
for us. Sometimes it was funny to
how quickly a bunch Of men car
dive into she'll hole or slight de-
preston in the earth when machine
run begins to sprinkle bullets around
them. did some fancy diving
'tunts that day myself.
BY now we were seeing lots Of
German prisoners coming to the rear
usually they were carrying ou1
wounded out to the dressing station
here were four Germans to each
stretcher, or sometimes they had the
wounded man in a blanket, and one
Of them at each corner
| Our barrage must have been ex-
pected, for there were plenty Of Ger
man horses and men lying around
where the barrage had caught them
bringing uprations to the men in
heir front line trenches.
One wire ENHANCEMENT that j
PASSED through that day in the wake
If tank was the worst that | have
ever seen over here at any place
1t looked like there were acres of
wire, and it was well swept by ma.
chine gun fire from the canal, until
our men and tanks put them out of
commission. After passing through
his last wire we were soon in the ca
nal, but the Doughboys ahead had
been through here and cleaned out
most of the Germans, SO we proceed
I'd over and out on the other side
land on. up through small valley.
Here were a number Of tanks that
would 60 no farther that day or fo1
many days to come.
Meanwhile, in the town Of Belle
court, we met stout resistance from
machine guns, and we all dived fol
he nearest shell holes and trenches
until we cleaned them out and ST.
enced their guns.
In large tunnel under Bellecourt
here is a vast space where we took
several hundred prisoners, also in
his tunnel, there is an electric plant
and in another part is what some
claim, was one Of the human SOAP
factories.
We finally advanced to our obiec.
i've, and later in the day, about noon
we dropped back to the canal and
| ook up quarters for the night in the
dug-outs just captured from the Ger
mans.
Later, we also found out that the
| Germans had mined all the bridges
also the tunnel, but that our first
wave had gotten TO them before they
could set the mines off, otherwise We
might not have had such an job a.
we did.
Then the air forces came in fo1
their share Of praise, for they did
some fine work on this date, often
diving down on a hidden machine
| nnn nest and uniting Il either ont of