While the first battalion was lying under the hill during the afternoon of the 28th they were very much harassed by enemy planes which came across flying low and shooting from their machine guns at the men on the hill and under the bank. Here Harry Martenson was killed and Hugh Heaney badly wounded and carried back by Sergeant Devine. Sergeant Frank Gardella thought it was time to try reprisals, so he set up his machine gun as an anti-aircraft weapon and began blazing away at fourteen planes which were above his head and flying low. He got a line on two planes which were flying one above the other, and by a lucky shot hit the pilot of the upper plane which crashed into the lower one and both came tumbling to earth not far from the river, their crews being killed. When Company C was advancing towards Bois Colas they met opposition from enemy light machine guns some of which were operating from the tree tops. Lieutenant Bell’s platoon, Sergeants Stephens and Gardella, Corporals J. McBride, Paul Fay and Williams were given the task of dislodging them. They carried up their heavy guns on their backs, and without taking time to set them up, they made use of them as if they were automatic rifles, with great effect, killing or capturing the enemy. From the time that Company C took possession of Bois Colas the Machine Gunners kept their pieces busy from their positions on the north edge of the woods, keeping down German fire from Seringes and around Meurcy Farm. Of their twelve guns, five were put out of action. In the later encounters Lieutenants Davis and Bell were wounded and Jack O’Leary, a famous fighting man, received a wound which afterwards caused his death. In the front line, on August 1st, there was a comparative lull in the activity. Our artillery was still going strong, but the Germans held command of the air and used it to the full. They flew down to the rear of us and hovered over the tree-tops of the woods where our artillery was emplaced, dropping bombs on them and shooting at them from levels so low that the artillery men answered with fire from their pistols.