The extreme northerly end of the French line of battle was then at Souchez and that position was held by one battalion of Zouaves, about one thousand men; next to them was the Second _régiment de Marche_ of the First Foreign Regiment, consisting of about four thousand men. In this last regiment was of course our five Americans, the sixth, Rockwell, being then in hospital. An Irish regiment was on the extreme southerly end of the English line, and thus joined with the French Zouaves. Pieces of white muslin were pinned to the backs of many of the Légionnaires (they advanced without knapsacks) so they could be distinguished from the enemy. This precaution was taken for the reason that in the attack on May 9th, a serious delay occurred because the observers attached to the French 75 guns were unable to distinguish the French from the Germans. A despatch bearer who had messages from the officers at the front stating that the Legion had made a great advance, and directing that the range of the guns be changed so as to pass over the French troops, was killed and the messages undelivered. When the soldiers of the Legion reached this line of range of their own guns, many ran into the fire, and the others were compelled to hold back until another messenger was despatched. After a terrific bombardment of the German trenches for several days, the French troops left their trenches at eight o’clock in the morning of June 16th, for the attack. Ladders were in the front line trenches to enable the soldiers to get out quickly; a ladder being provided for every five men. It will be remembered that on May 9th Battalion C led the advance, followed by A, and then B, but on June 16th it was Battalion B, containing these five Americans, that was first to leave in its sector. It faced a very severe fire from machine guns, rifles and shrapnel. The men ran forward in a line, at a distance of about a yard apart, and many fell before the first line of German trenches were reached. These had been destroyed by the French artillery and vacated by the enemy, and little of the barbed wide defences remained. However, the broken ground where those trenches had been afforded some slight shelter and advantage was taken of it to rest and rearrange the line. They then rushed for the second line of trenches, which were strongly defended, having many machine guns in action; the French lost heavily before reaching these trenches, those who did safely reach them had a hand to hand fight with the Germans. It was here that Paul Pavelka received a bayonet wound in his leg and Lawrence Scanlan was severely wounded in his leg and foot by rifle fire, Russell Kelly received what a companion described as “a clean wound in his left shoulder that did not seem to be serious.” All trace of John Smith and Kenneth Weeks was lost at this point. Weeks carried the supply of hand grenades for his section.