sn't a man
left standing. One of them crawled to the stern and began pushing the raft
toward shore with a pole but he was so weak that the current kept swinging
him down a stream. A sniper got him.

The raft was drifting away. Nobody expected to see the men on it again,
but, in the face of shrapnel and a nasty fire from snipers, three men,
stark naked, jumped into the stream and struck out for the raft. The water
around them was whipped by bullets, but our boys located the snipers and
got the range and quieted them. The first man reached the raft. His hands
were over the edge. He had just pushed his head and shoulders over the
side when a rifle snapped and he slipped back into the water; then I saw
the German who had fired at him topple out of a tree. A dozen shots must
have struck him. The two other swimmers were alongside the raft now and
climbed upon it. I could see that one was bleeding at the shoulder. Our
men pulled the wounded man upon the raft, and brought it to shore. Their
heroism saved the lives of five men who otherwise would have drifted away
and probably died.

Soon our own artillery began to locate the German guns, whose fire
diminished. Then our infantry began to cross the river at a dozen points.
On the opposite bank was a village by the name of Bourg. Up and down hills
we worked our way, forcing the enemy off the ridges. The details of the
operations would not be of interest. We wanted to close with the bayonets,
but the boches weren't ready for that, and they dropped back foot by foot,
keeping up a hot fire.

On this side of the river were numerous stone quarries, and in these we
found tons and tons of ammunition for the heavy German guns. The type and
manufacturers' marks showed that some of it was made as far back as the
Franco-Prussian war. It had been lying in caches in the quarries for
years, the Prussians having bought titles to some of the land through
spies who posed as Frenchmen. They had been making use of this ammunition
against us. It shows how long ago the war was planned and by whom. In some
of the quarries we uncovered re-enforced concrete fortification and
emplacements for cannon.

Our commander, Colonel Grant Duff, was in the thickest of the fighting. I
saw him distributing bandoliers of ammunition along the firing line. His
men tried to make him go to the rear, but we were having a tough time to
keep fire superiority, and we needed every man in the line. Suddenly
Colonel Duff sta