As I recall, it happened as follows: The telephone buzzed; I answered, and the message came over the wire somewhat in this fashion: "Hello, hello, is this Hannibal? Hannibal, there is a friend we have back in the country [the brigadier general] who is very fond of radishes [prisoners]. He wants one for breakfast to-morrow morning without fail." This reached me at about ten or eleven o'clock. The raid had to be executed before daylight. In the meantime the plans had to be made, the company commander notified, the raiding party chosen, and all ranks instructed. Add to this that everything had to be done during the dark and you will see what a difficult proposition it was. I got hold of the company commander, got the men organized, telephoned to the artillery, and asked for five minutes' preparation fire on a certain point, joined the raiding party and went forward with it. Then the first of a string of misfortunes happened. On account of the hurry and the difficulty of transmission, the artillery mistook the coördinate and fired three hundred meters too short, with the result that an effective bit of preparation fire was wasted on my own raiding party. By the time this preparatory firing upon our own raiding party was over, the Germans naturally understood that something was happening, for why would we strafe our own front-line trenches to no purpose? The result was that when the raid went over, every machine gun in the area was watching for them. They got to the opposing wire, ran into cross-fire, and, after various casualties, found it entirely impossible to get by the enemy wire, and worked their way back. As they were working back a senior sergeant, Yarborough by name, was sitting in a shell hole, machine-gun bullets singing by him, checking his party as it came in. Lieutenant Ridgely, who had been with the party, came up to him. As he crawled along, Yarborough said to him: "Lieutenant, this reminds me of a story. There was once a guy who decided to commit suicide by hanging himself. Just about the time he done a good job of it the rope broke. He was sitting up on the floor afterward when I came in, a-rubbing his neck, and when he saw me, all he said was, 'Gee, but that was dangerous.'" During this period the German Château-Thierry drive was made, again scoring a clean break-through. The Second Division, which was coming up to our rear to relieve us, was switched and thrown in front of the enemy. Shortly after the Huns attacked toward the town of Compiègne, in an endeavor to straighten out the reëntrant in their lines with its apex at Soissons. This latter attack passed by on our right flank.