The situation was set for a further advance. Headquarters at regiment, brigade, and division were busy preparing for it and the Artillery were ready to co-operate. They had been shelling Bois Brulé just in front of us, and the upper edge of Seringes et Nesles and the edge of the forest all day. Telephone lines had been stretched to the front by the 117th Signal Battalion and our own signal section of Headquarters Company. These were exceedingly busy days at Colonel McCoy’s P. C., for at last there was a spot that one could dignify with the title of Post of Command. The first day of the battle there had been three or four posts in succession. On Saturday evening Colonel McCoy was in the Chateau de Fere, but when he got orders for his regiment to make the attack he went forward with them himself to join McKenna near the river. When the battalion went over he set up his headquarters right there in a shallow trench on the exposed river slope. It seemed no place for a commanding officer on whom so much had to depend, but he made up his mind that it was his place to be where he could view the battle himself, as there was no speedy way for him to get information, and the immediate decision concerning the actions and fate of his men would rest largely on his own judgment. These were his reasons; but there is always a good deal of the element of personality back of anybody’s reasons. And Frank R. McCoy, soldier of five campaigns, would naturally see the force of reasons which brought him as close as possible to the firing line. The Germans began to argue the point in their usual violent way, but the Colonel remained unconvinced. Lieutenant Rerat was wounded slightly in that hole, and many men hurt around it. Finally Captain Hurley was badly wounded while reporting to his Chief, and the Staff united with the Germans in arguing that it was not the best place to do regimental business. So Colonel McCoy brought them back a ways to a sunken road that ran across the town. Here the shelling pursued them and Lieutenant B. B. Kane, a fine, manly fellow, received a mortal wound from a shell that exploded a few feet from where he was standing in a group around the Colonel. Meanwhile the reliable Captain Michael J. Walsh had been scouring the town for a suitable place, and had found one in the cellar of a house still nearer the lines, but accessible to messengers from the orchards on the east, thus obviating the trip through Dead Man’s Curve.