“Beside me stood Captain Tribot-Laspierre, that splendid fellow who stuck to me through thick and thin. He had been begging me to get back to a safer place, but I was obstinate and he never once thought of leaving me. When I fell he came out of his cover and rushed to my side. He is a little man and I am not, but he dragged me head first back to the shelter trench some twenty or twenty-five feet away. My life has been spared and I owe much to that Frenchman. [Illustration: © _Leslie’s Weekly._ The Bridge Across the Marne at Château-Thierry Where the 7th Machine Gun Battalion of the 3rd Division Checked the German Drive.] “I have heard of men getting wounded who said that it felt like a red-hot iron being jammed through them before the world turned black. None of these things happened to me. I suffered but little pain and I never for a moment lost consciousness. Nor did any thought of death occur to me, though I knew I had been hit in a vital spot. I was merely annoyed at my inability to move and carry on. “The bullet went clean through my right lung, in at the front and out at the back, drilling a hole straight through me. “No orders as to the adjustment of rifle sights had been given, as the range was point blank. Watches had been synchronized and no further orders were given. As the hands touched the zero hour there was a single shout, and at exactly 5 o’clock the whole line leaped up simultaneously and started forward, Berry’s 500 and Sibley’s 500, with the others in support. “Instantly the beast in the wood bared his claws. The Boches were ready and let loose a sickening machine gun and rifle fire into the teeth of which the Marines advanced. The German artillery in the woods increased the fury of its fire, and the big guns at Belleau and Torcy, a mile and a half away, pounded our advancing lines. “On Berry’s front there was the open wheat field, 400 yards or more wide—winter wheat, still green but tall and headed out. Other cover there was none. On Sibley’s left there was open grass land perhaps 200 yards wide; his right was close to the woods. “Owing to the poor communications, the two battalions engaged in what were virtually independent actions, and, as I had feared, Berry got the worst end of it. He had to face that wide open space, swept by machine gun fire, with a flanking fire from the direction of Torcy. AS SIBLEY’S MEN ADVANCED