The first wave was to be Company K, already so cruelly tried by the gas attack at Lunéville. Their leader was Captain John Patrick Hurley, whose slender form and handsome ascetic face seemed to mark the poet or the student rather than the soldier. But he was a keen soldier, one whose blood pumped full and even when death was flying round. Company K was willing to die for him or with him anywhere. At his command they moved forward in advance formation with intervals all perfect at a walk, a trot, a run, down to the Ourcq. It was a sight to remember while life would last, as perfect as a peace manœuvre but with death all around. In that short advance Sergeant Frank Doughney and Corporal Raymond Staber, the heroic son of Mount Loretto, found their way to heaven; and a number of good men were wounded. But they swept on over the Green Mill bridge and across its dam and through the waters of the river with Captain Hurley and Lieutenant Pat Dowling in the lead, and did not stop till they had gained a footing under the bank of the road beyond the river. Right on their heels came Company I under the Boer War Veteran, Captain Richard J. Ryan, in the same perfect formation. They, too, swept across the Ourcq (Eddie Joyce being the one man killed), and took up their place with Company K under the bank. The two Captains reformed their men and were looking over the situation. Their objective was Meurcy Farm. But that lay in the valley and was impossible to take until at least one of the slopes was cleared to its summit; as a direct advance would expose them to fierce enfilading fire. Even where they were, one group of enemy machine guns could fire direct on their flank; so Captain Ryan sent one of his best men, Sergeant E. Shanahan, with Hugh McFadden, Pat McKeon, Hettrick, Hartnett and others to put it out of action. A forlorn hope, he felt, but they did it without losses, as Shanahan was a born leader. The line was scarcely straightened out when the men were given the word to advance. The left of Company K moved out on the lower slopes along the little valley towards Meurcy Farm; the right of K and all of I at an angle straight up the bare, smooth slope towards the machine gun nests that were spitting fire from that direction. That kind of action suited Pat Dowling. He jumped to his feet and called to his platoon to follow, when a machine gun bullet gave him a mortal wound. Sergeant Embree and John J. Conefry fell by his side. A heart-broken soldier lifted the Lieutenant. “Did they get that machine gun on the right?” “Yes, sir.” Then, “Thank God!” and a dauntless leader of men was no more.