al
responsibility; merging from the reserve into the attack; and taking its
place with the Immortal Combat Divisions of proud Old Glory.

The front line sector, which that night we took over, extended in a
general westerly direction from north of Pont a Musson on the Moselle
river to Vigneulles--a distance of ten kilometers.

Approximate positions found the 55th Infantry at Thiacourt, the 64th at
Vieville, the 37th at Fay-en-Haye, and the 56th at Vilcey-sur-Trey, with
Machine Gun Battalions distributed equally among them. During September,
Division Headquarters was at Villers-en-Haye; moving forward in echelon
to Noviant and Euvezin October 24th.

Although Villers-en-Haye was mostly in ruins, the Sacristy of the
village church was in good shape, and this I at once occupied. On the
preceding Sunday, good Father Harmon of Chicago had said Mass in this
church, as a note, fastened to its front door, announced.

Thoroughly tired, I spread my blanket on the floor and fell quickly to
sleep. I dreamed I was tied to a railroad track with a train rushing
towards me. With a start I awoke, just as a siren voiced shell came
screaming across the fields, bursting at the foot of the hill on which
the church stood.

The gas alarm was at once sounded and every trooper sought refuge in the
dugouts. It was then half-past eight. At four-minute intervals and with
the most deadly regularity these shells came at us for four
nerve-racking hours.

Boom! You could hear it leave the eight-inch howitzer six miles away,
then in a high tenor pitch, it rushed toward you with a crescendo of
sound, moaning, wailing, screaming, hissing, bursting with frightful
intensity apparently in the center of your brain. Falling here, there,
and everywhere in the ruins and environs of the village, mustard gas,
flying steel and mortar, levied cruel toll on six boys, whose mangled
bodies I laid away the following afternoon at Griscourt under the hill.
One of these, I now recall, was Corporal Donald Bryan of the 7th
Engineers, a most handsome and talented young man who, before the war,
had won fame in the field of movie drama.

"Where were you last night?" inquired gallant Colonel Cummings of
Missouri, our Machine Gun Regimental Commander.

"In the sacristy," I replied.

"The worst possible place for you!" he exclaimed; "you would find it far
safer in a dugout."

I preferred the sacristy, however, for its convenience to the altar,
where I could say daily M