By accepted canons this misfortune might have ruined the whole movement, or at least led to delaying the movements of the other units; but delays were out of the question. There was no time to communicate counter-orders to the 28th, which had gathered all its strength for a supreme effort whose success depended upon the coöperation of the 82nd. If the whole line could not go forward at daylight, then all of it that could must go. Fortunately the dark night, which had screened their movement from accurate fire by the enemy, was followed by a thick morning fog. This was opportune in partially screening an attack which must cross the river in face of the heights which they were to storm. The right, or north, regiment, as it started on time, had the advantage of the fog in its first rush. The men forded through water two and three feet deep; the officers who were leading pulled them up the steep banks on the other side. By 8.30 Hill 180, with its machine-gun nests, which had been one of the bulwarks defying the thin line of the 28th for nearly two weeks, was no longer in German hands. The men of the left regiment, starting at 9 o'clock against a still higher hill, 223, overlooking Châtel-Chéhéry, were swept at the fords by enfilade shell-fire and storms of machine-gun bullets in front, which made fearful gaps in their ranks. Under the spur of their delay, considering nothing except that they must make up for lost time, they plunged ahead, and once across they did not bother with any deliberate infiltration around machine-gun nests, but simply swept over them in headlong impatience. By one o'clock they had the hill, a portion of which had been reached by a small detachment of the 28th. They did not know whether or not the 28th had reached Châtel-Chéhéry until they saw soldiers of the 28th climbing the steep sides of Hill 244 back of the town. The fact that two-thirds of the men of two of the companies of the 82nd were killed or wounded was evidence enough that the 1st was not the only division willing to pay a price for gains when it was called upon to be a human wedge. This finished the day's work for the left regiment, except for a German counter-attack which received such prompt and efficacious attention that another was not attempted.