Omaha daily bee., 1919-06-08

nests in the Arbe les Jomblets and
the Bois de Planchette.
Here on Hill 220, Sergt. B. w.
Hamilton of M Company, l6Sth in
fontry, wounded while out ahead of
his own line, was attacked by 10
Prussian guardsmen. He shot five
and the rest ran away.
The Aalabamans got we'll on to-
ward the top of the plateau, and
the 165th, unsuccessful at Meurcy
Farm with the new Indian meth
cd" of attack on machine guns, call
ed for long concentration of artil-
lery fire on the place, and finally
their Irish tempers got the best of
them and they went at it with their
bayonets as they had gone over
the top in Champagne. They killed
the German machine gunners in
hand-to-hand fighting.
In the afternoon, Colonel Hough's
men of the Tooth regiment, stormed
Seringes on its high, bare hill. 1t
was a gallant charge across 1900
meters of ground entirely without
cover, while machine-9un nests
flanked it and heavy fire came from
the village. Instead of taking it by
direct attack the Ohioans worked
around it and took Hill 1874 to the
northwest. From there they silenc-
ed the machine guns in Seringes and
then went down and bayonetted the
gunners who were left.
Huns Chained to Guns.
1t was shortly after this, you will
remember, that stories became cur
rent about Germsns being found
chained to their machine guns in
the woods. There also began COM
ing from German sources stories OF
inhuman cruelty of American SOL
diers. There had been many other
stories heretofore, bearing on the in
human treatment of German soldiers
by their officers, and there had been
much German propaganda intended
to counteract stories OF German
fendishness and cruelty.
But behind those stories in those
days of late July and early August,
1918, was something more than
propaganda. There was looming up
in the German army a feeling OF
terror of these quick, forward NOV
ing men in olive drab, who were
not afraid even of the wonderful
German machine guns, but who
dived and wriggled toward them and
were suddenly all around them in
desperate little rings.
German gunners were being
chained to their guns; it was becom-
ing necessary. And since men at
bay will always fight for their lives,
the fights around the machine gun
nests in the battle of the Ourcq
were nearly always fights to the
death. The Rainbow division took
few prisoners in that battle; its rec
ord of prisoners captured through
out the war falls short of the rec
ords of one or two other divislonsi
it usually fought to kill. That was
the cruelty of which the Germans
spoke.
Germans Send Reserves.
With this advance of the Rainbow
through the first of the Ourcq's
great defenses, the German high
command, too, became alarmed for
the dignity of its retirement from
the Chateau Thierry salient. 1t be-
gan putting III reserves. Opposite
the Rainbow there was now, from
left to right the 10th Laudwehr
division, the Sixth Bavarian re.
serves, the Fourth Prussian guard
and the 20lst. Nowhere else along
the whole fighting front were Ger
man troops massed so densely as op.
posite the Rainbow, the 18th and
the Third American divisions at this
stage of the Ourcq battle.
By 8 o'clock on the night Of July
so, Colonel Fairchild, the Rainbow
division surgeon, had reported the
losses in wounded alone as 3,276
men from the beginning Of the
/. fighting at La Croix Rouge Ferme,
OF the killed no record could be
kept at that time. The brave men
whA had diad warA out there in the