Ordered to relieve machine gunners of the 29th American Division and certain French troops, the Company began its march to the new positions that night, only locating the sector assigned to it after a six hour hike during which colorful compliments were paid the guides who had been assigned from the relieved units to lead the way. Loaded with packs, guns and ammunition and further handicapped by the hilly character of the country, the men struggled through shell holes, occasional bits of barbed wire, underbrush and fallen trees and mud, always mud, to the positions in the Bois d'Ormont which they reached just before dawn. The Bois d'Ormont is a small elliptical-shaped woodland on the crest of one of the many hills in that region and the American and German lines were within a few yards of each other, near the center of the woods. Members of the Company with ability to converse with the Huns, made several trips to the German lines and tried to induce them to return as prisoners, but the minions of Prussianism were strong in their belief that the war was shortly coming to an early end and decided they could better afford to take the chance for the rest of the time than enter a prison camp for an indefinite period. They told of changes in the government of the Fatherland, the abdication of the Kaiser and other rumors afterward fulfilled. October 20 a short American barrage brought an immediate response from the nervous Teutons and they laid a box barrage around the sector occupied by the Division, evidently believing an attack was coming. Until the 23d the lines were at a standstill. On several occasions it was rumored that an attack was to be made by the enemy or Allied troops, but all that broke the monotony of the days was the Hun practice of shelling ration parties. With the infantry battalions, especially those of the 102d Regiment, depleted by the enormous losses they had incurred in previous action, the Division was holding a rather narrow sector. Officers were lacking in most of the companies and the men were holding on through sheer nerve, short of rations, clothing, blankets and all the creature comforts obtainable in parts of the line they had formerly occupied. It was in this condition they were ordered to take the aggressive October 23. On the left of the Company's positions parts of the 102d and 101st Infantry regiments succeeded in straightening out a section of the line which threatened to prove a favorable position for a flanking attack by the enemy. This manœuver was completed with the aid of the artillery and machine guns.