Yet Corps and Army thought the 37th ought to be very cheerful. Hadn't they been assigned, on the morning of the 28th, ten small tanks to assist them in taking Cierges? The tanks were moving gallantly along the western edge of Emont Wood until the German artillery, from the heights which had them in plain view, concluded that they had gone far enough, and put them out of action. Then the German artillery turned its undivided attention to assisting the German infantry, concentrating its volume upon any attempt of the Ohioans, whose brains and legs were numb from fatigue, to storm particularly murderous flanking machine-gun nests. Patrols, creeping up ravines and dodging bursts of shells, succeeded in entering Cierges. They could not be supported by the artillery, which was now up, as it had run out of ammunition. Thus our guns were silent when the enemy started a counter-attack beyond Cierges; but the vengeful and accurate fire of the infantry soon sent the survivors of the advancing German wave to cover. Later the artillery, having received some ammunition, when it had an aeroplane signal of the Germans massing for another counter-attack, scotched it promptly. If the Germans could not budge us, we could not budge them. Every time we showed our heads in any effort for another gain, we stirred up a hornet's nest of bullets and offered a fresh target for a storm of shell-bursts. Late in the afternoon word came from the 91st, asking coöperation from the 37th in a further advance to relieve pressure on the wedge it had driven past the fronts of its neighbors. The fact that the message was two hours in transit was sufficient comment on the state of communication between divisions which had extended themselves to the limit of their power. The Ohio men who were already intrenching might still be willing to charge, but it was the willingness of the spirit rather than of the flesh. Had every gun and machine-gun on their front there on the threshold of the whale-back been silenced, and had they been ordered to march another two miles over that rough ground, a majority would have dropped in their tracks from exhaustion. There was nothing to do but stick where they were. This was as easy as for logs of wood to lie in their places. They fell asleep over their spades, and the bursts of high-explosive shells which shook the earth did not waken them. All they asked of the world was rest and food.