The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1919-01-02

Iu- anu Ou aId up NAS NH bAlC IOu'si IA
buys went
In an instant the wires hummet
With the news. Signals flew frua
the kill tops, pigeons sprang into tht
air with the tidings and overhead tht
lowering aircraft paused, wheeled
ard started back, Soon from each o
them would drop to some open 'ielt
cleaning cylinder, traceable in it,
passage through the air by its flu,
tering streamer q. white, messages
from the air 10 the waiting com
manders in the rear.
"0Ver on the Minute"
The burden of all these message:
Fas pretty mach the same along the
whole 20 mile front Take one
flashed back by corporal, sQuatting
telephone in hand, at his lookout
alton. He may have tried to keep
his voice level and military. His
report, as it was caught on the type
writer in some message center fal
behind, will some day gather dust
in the archives Of the War Depart
ment at Washington. 1t read;
Troops over the top with yell
on the minute"
1t meant that the line--which had
held at least that much ground for
four long years and which had not
moved an inch either way for more
than a year-the line was moving at
last, and toward Germany
Then, as the Infantry rushed for
ward, smothering or passing by the
rear guard machine gun nests and
rounding up the ulsorganized Ger
man troops whose retreat had been
cut OFF by the barrage, every othel
arm Of the service took up the strain
OF moving forward. at the end of
the second day, tho counter attacks
began, came thicker and faster in the
days succeeding as the resistance
stiffencd, brought with them fierce,
close hand grenade lighting as the
battle line swayed back and forth,
But for the Grst two days, it was a
matter of pursuit, and for all the
Army. the sleeplCss task of keeping
IN with the Infantry.
Moving Up Starts Early.
That movement had begun at mid
; light The night before. At midnight
some battalions of 75's had fired a
lew rounds and then packed up to
start forward through the mud and
darkness, starting so early that be-
fore sundown they We're pitched on
new hillsides and, without waiting
for camoufage or good emplace-
ments, were firing steadily into the
1e,eding German lines.
The pace set for them can be
gauged By the fact that one regiment
al aid station, after patching up the
first wounded at its old stand until
8 on Thursday morning jumped for
ward eight kilometers and was at
work in Coisy by noon of the first
day. By sundown Of thatfirst day the
Infantry lines in some places had
gone forward more than five miles,
a-d through the maze of'trafIic which
clogged the crazy roads, the urgenI
message ran back: Guns before all
else, and then food for the guns.
Rations second, ammunition first, -
To get the guns up, meat and
e1fnCe mus. Wait Everything--eE
cert ambulaDeas-musa wait If
horses dragging the 75's through the
mud should be Eill-d ur, having done
their level best, should drop from
e.si3D, hem human muscles
aus. push the guns cn their way.
{ a big gun should capsize in some
ell hole I'D desrai, Of moving on
its aseigaod position, then it must
make tha5 Gael. lie It's p3si.iol and
9cn fro frcm there. More than once
hegc things happened.
The problem Of moving up the
uns and the othor supplies was
made both supremely important and
5upremely difficult through the first
hree days by the nature of the ter
rain over which the Americans were
ighting-one of the most difficult
battlefelds in Europe-and by the
condition in which four years Of
battle had left that terrain.
Here was a stretch of French
countryside all little hills and val
leys. In the summer of 1914 it was
beautifully carpeted with green,
field after field of we'll husbanded
farms, with here and there a golden
wheat crop embroidered with scarlet
poppies, and here and there village
of stone homes with red-tiled roofs.
Now it looks as though the hand
of some grotesquely gigantic leper
had reached out of the East and
touched it, 1t is dead country
There are no homes, no life, no
verdure. Here and there some
crumbled stone where a house once
stood, here and there the blackened
stump of a blasted tree. For the
rest there is only scorched, bleak
countryside, pitted with shell holes
and mine craters like the face of the
moon.