Our 3rd Battalion took over the front line on the Cote de Maldah, a maze of woods and ravines. Companies M and I were on the twin knolls of the Cote, K and L in the woods behind. To their left were the Ohios at Sommerance, while the Alabamas and Iowas held positions similar to our own on hills 263 and 269. Our 2nd Battalion was in a shrubby woods to the rear, and the 1st Battalion was originally held under protection of the hill just outside of Exermont, in which town were the headquarters of the 165th and 166th and the Regimental Dressing Stations of the 165th and 167th. Our artillery, which had been in support of the 32nd Division, rejoined us on October 13th, making a hard, forced march with animals that had been reduced in strength and numbers by our continuous warfare. Colonel Henry Reilly, a West Point graduate, and a man of great intelligence and force of character, was appointed to direct the operations of the artillery brigade, leaving Lieutenant Colonel Redden to take charge of his own regiment, the 149th Field Artillery. The artillery of the 1st division also remained to assist in the sector. The German main line of defense—the Kriemhilde Stellung, was about three kilometers in front of our brigade but less than two in front of the 84th Brigade. It was a well prepared and strongly wired position consisting of three lines of wires and trenches. The first rows of wire were breast high and as much as twenty feet wide, all bound together in small squares by iron supports so that it was almost impossible for artillery to destroy it unless the whole ground were beaten flat. Back of this were good trenches about four feet deep with machine gun shelters carefully prepared. Behind this front line at thirty yards intervals they had two other lines with lower wire and shallower trenches. Starting from our left these trenches ran from west to east on our side of two small villages called St. Georges and Landres et St. Georges. From in front of the latter village the wire turned in a southeasterly direction towards us, following the lowest slope of the Cote de Chatillon and embracing LaMusarde Ferme, thence swinging east again to take in the Tuilerie Ferme. The Cote de Chatillon was a high wooded knoll which commanded the terrain to west and south.