On the morning of the 29th Colonel McCoy with Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell went up to look over the whole situation and consult with Donovan and Anderson. The decks were now cleared for a battle. The telephone was in to the front line, to the Brigade Post of Command, and to the Artillery. There was a chance for a commanding officer to be of real service to the Battalion Commanders. With the telephone to the front and rear at his elbow, he had the strings in his hands, and he certainly kept pulling those strings day and night. A message would come in from an O. P. (Observation Post) where Captain Elmer and Corporal Bob Lee were on the watch: “Shells needed on machine gun nests at crest of hill 195.45-274.05 to 196.1-274.5.” Or one from Donovan: “Important to shell Bois Brulé, where forty machine gun emplacements are reported.” And Lieutenant Weaver, a smart youngster from the 151st Field Artillery, would be put on the job in a second. Or it might be a message of the Colonel to General Lenihan in response to a call from Donovan: “Cut out fire on neck of woods south of Bois Brulé. It is endangering our Infantry in Bois Colas.” Night and day that telephone was working, receiving news from the front, effecting co-operation with neighboring regiments or sending back requests for barrages, counter-battery work, food supplies, ammunition, ambulances, air service. Soldiers in the line never fully realize how much their lives, and victory, which is more to them than their lives, depend on the alertness and intelligence of those in command. It was an interesting group at the regimental P. C., McCoy with his spare soldierly figure and his keen soldierly face, radiant with the joy of action and the prospects of victory, always a stimulus to those who might be downhearted. For the first day, as operations officer, he had George McAdie, patient, painstaking and enduring, until the order came, less endurable to him than an enemy bullet, that he should proceed forthwith for duty at a home station. A hard sentence for a born soldier in the middle of a battle. And succeeding him Merle-Smith, just come out of the carnage, with an untidy bandage around his wounded arm, but with his mind set only on his job. Alert youngsters, Lieutenants Rerat, Seidelman, Jim Mangan, Heinel (afterwards wounded) and Preston, with Captain Jack Mangan drifting in occasionally to see if his supplies were coming up satisfactorily.