line of the Aisne river, which here runs roughly east and west. From just north of Somme-Py, in the center of the up-slanting east face of the salient, the 2nd Division, attached with French divisions to the Twenty-first Corps, was to strike over chalk ridges and through woods northwest toward Machault. The attack was first set for October 2nd, but was postponed while the division spent this day in cleaning German recalcitrants out of a portion of the trench system taken over from a French division which had captured it. The Corps orders for the attack were then issued so late that there was not time to have them translated and written out, as the custom was, for the sake of accuracy which was considered indispensable to the team-play of units; but they had to be sent orally to our two brigades. In the center of the field of attack was the Vipère Wood, which was known to hold many machine-gun nests. By a converging movement the Marine brigade was to pass this wood on the left, and the Regular brigade to pass it on the right in flank, and form line beyond it,--which was not a mission a general would assign to tyros who had not yet learned to maintain the _liaison_ of their units in difficult fighting. In order to go into position, the Regular brigade had a night march around the rear of the line. Happily the men of the 2nd Division had had experience of this sort of thing. They had gone in on the run at Château-Thierry, and again in the crucial drive at Soissons on July 18th. It had been said that they did things best in a hurry, which may have led to their being relied on as "hit-and-run"-experts; nevertheless they had an idea of their own that if they might have moved into line and looked over the ground a few hours before going into an attack, instead of charging when they were breathless from sprinting, they might have done equally well with slightly less nerve strain. As the French guides who were to meet the Regular brigade at dark and show it the way did not appear, which was a common failing with guides, the brigade had to grope about among shell-craters and communication trenches to find its jumping-off place, which was still partly occupied by the enemy. By 5 A.M. only six companies were in position; but by 5.50, the hour for attack, thanks to the owl's eyes and instinct of direction which seemed to be a part of the equipment of the 2nd, every company was up in order, ready for the charge. With tanks assisting against its machine-gun nests, they swept past the Vipère Wood. A loss of twenty per cent of their infantry did not interfere with their reaching their two-mile objective on schedule time at 8.30.