In the afternoon, after six hours of battle, Donovan reported that the 3rd Battalion, which had gotten up to the slopes under the German wire, was too badly shot up to be able to push through. He requested an artillery barrage of an hour and a half to keep the Germans distracted while he withdrew the 3rd Battalion carrying their wounded, through the 1st Battalion under Major Kelly, who would take their place. At dusk Kelly made his advance by infiltration, Company C on the left, Company D on the right. The men stole forward, losing heavily but taking advantage of every inequality in the surface of the ground. Towards the right of our position a rough wagon road run up through a draw between two gradual slopes and just before it reached the main road between Sommerance and Landres it passed through a deep cut, in some places eight feet deep, part of which was included in the enemy’s wire defenses. The battalion fought its way right up to the enemy’s wire, only to find it an impassable barrier. Our artillery fire had not made a break in it anywhere, as for lack of aeroplanes to register the effects of their work they had been shooting entirely by the map. Groups of our lads dashed up to the wire only to be shot down to the last man. Some ran through a passage made for the roadway, the only possible method of getting through, but this of course was absolutely covered by the German guns, and every man that went through it was shot and, if not killed outright, taken prisoner. Soldiers of ours and of the Engineers with wire-cutting tools lay on their faces working madly to cut through the strands, while riflemen and grenadiers alongside of them tried to beat down the resistance. But they were in a perfect hail of bullets from front and flank, and every last man was killed or wounded. Further back was a concentration of artillery fire, of bursting shells and groans and death, that made the advance of the support platoons a veritable hell.