They attempted further resistance near Essey where they had machine gun pits in front of the village, but the resistance was quickly reduced by the aid of a tank and the village was cleared of the enemy. Donovan kept the battalion in the stone walled gardens on the outskirts of the town. Our own barrage was still pounding the village, for Essey represented the objective of the “First Phase, First Day,” and some of our men who wandered into town were hit by flying stone from the walls of houses. Prisoners began to come in and a prisoner park was established near a big tree on the road leading into the village. French civilians were still living in this village, having spent the period of bombardment in a big dugout—the first civilians that we had the pleasure of actually liberating. They laughed and wept and kissed everybody in sight and drew on their slender stock of provisions to feed the hungry men. The soldiers began wandering everywhere looking for souvenirs. Corporal Kearin was in charge of the prison park. All the captives were from the regiments of the 10th Division, except a few from an attached Minenwerfer company and an artillery regiment. They were eager for fraternization and chatted and laughed with their captors. The men of the support battalions and from the units on our right and left, attracted by the town, began to straggle over. It resembled a County Fair, the prisoner park being the popular attraction of the day. Americans literally swarmed around the prisoners in idle curiosity while others rummaged through the German billets and headquarters looking for pistols, maps, German post-cards and letters—anything that would do for a souvenir. However, this did not last long, Donovan had his battalion out and going for the objective which was marked as “Second Phase, First Day,” which lay beyond the next town of Pannes; and Anderson, coming in with the bulk of the 2nd Battalion, imposed his rigorous discipline on those whose business it was to be in town. He certainly was not loved for knocking in the head of a barrel of beer which some of the fellows had found (and, by the way, there can be no better proof of the rapidity with which the Germans evacuated the town than the fact that they had left it behind). Donovan met with further resistance when he arrived before Pannes about one o’clock in the afternoon. He called for artillery and tanks and filtered up his men along the trees on the edge of the road while the Ohios advanced on the left and the Alabamas make a flanking movement against the town from its right. They soon had the opposition broken and by 1:45 P. M. our advanced elements, widely extended, were proceeding from Pannes towards the Bois de Thiaucourt, and at 1:55 the objective “Second Phase, First Day” was occupied by the 165th Infantry. [Illustration: AT QUENTIN ROOSEVELT’S GRAVE THE CENTRAL FIGURE IS COLONEL McCOY]