When they get close to the enemy the advance is made by frequent rushes, about a fourth of the men in a platoon running forward, taking advantage of the ground, while their comrades keep the enemy’s heads down by their fire, until all of them can get close. In its last stages the warfare of these small groups is more like the Indian fighting in which the first General of our Republic learned the profession of arms, than anything which the imagination of civilians pictures it. To take machine gun nests—I am not speaking of regularly wired and entrenched positions which it is the business of artillery to reduce before the infantry essays them—it is often a matter of individual courage and strategy. Sometimes the fire of a platoon can reduce the number of the gunners or make the less hardy of them keep their heads down so that the pieces cannot be properly handled; but often the resistance is overcome by a single sharp-shooter firing from the elbow of a tree, or by some daring fellow who works his way across hollows which are barely deep enough to protect him from fire, or up a gully or watercourse, until he is near enough to throw hand grenades. Then it is all over. Our supply company and band were stationed at the Ferme de l’Esperance on the Aire River. Going north along the river road as far as Fleville one finds a road going to the right through a deep defile which leads to the village of Exermont about a mile and a half away. On the north and on the south the view is bounded by steep hills which have been captured by the 1st Division. To the north a muddy trail winds around the base of hill 247 leading to a wide, rough, partly wooded plain. This was covered with the bodies of the brave soldiers of the 1st Division, more thickly than I have seen anywhere else with the exception of the hill where lay our 3rd Battalion north of the Ourcq. There were many German wooden shelters at the base of the hill to the right, with bodies of dead Germans, many of them killed in hand to hand conflict.