In picking up stories of the fight I got one from Lieutenant Allen which I have jotted down as he gave it to me. “We came in front of Essey. Here there was a hill marked on the aeroplane photographs and maps which were issued before the attack as ‘Dangerous, go to the right and left.’ As we came over the top of this hill and advanced on its forward slope the battalion drew machine gun fire from the enemy guns disposed in pits in front of the village. I was out in front in a shell-hole with two snipers. One of them I sent back to Donovan with a message; the other began firing on the enemy who now began to run back into the village. In an adjoining shell-hole a few feet away, a soldier from our battalion sold a German Luger Pistol to an officer from some other regiment who had wandered from his sector, for thirty-five francs. A French tank caught up to us at this stage of the fight and moved down the hill until it was in front of the shell-hole where I was. I rapped on the side of his turret and called to the pilot, who reversed the turret and while the bullets slapped the side of his tank, opened the window. He was a dapper little Frenchman with the ends of his moustache waxed in points, and was clean and smiling. I gave him a target in front of the town and he fired several round at a mass of retreating Boches hurrying over the next hill. Opening the window again, he smiled and said ‘How’s that?’ then he went lumbering on.” As the first battalion was making its advance during the second day it was held up in front of Sebastopol Farm by our own barrage which had not yet lifted. While waiting there they saw a French peasant woman with a small boy grasping her hand running through the shell fire from the direction of the farm. When questioned, she was in a great rage against the Boches and reported that a battalion of their troops had evacuated St. Benoit during the night. She also gave the welcome information that there were supplies of food in the farm and was very grateful to the Americans for releasing her from four years of captivity. She was the only woman that we saw actually on the battlefield during the war.