With its personnel varying from little men from the tenements to tall lean men of the cotton-fields, the 82nd had in its pride of corps the rivalry of community, region, and state. It was said that one city division had been careful in its sifting when it transferred an excess of its draft men to the 82nd. If so, the result shows how inspectors may err in judging by the measure of a recruit's chest whether or not he will have the heart of a warrior when good food reddens the blood pumped through the valves it strengthens, and drill and comradeship stiffen his fighting temper. The All-Americas might have no state or group of states that claimed them for its own; but the conviction that they were for all the states--all America--was the fostering spirit of the four days of unceasing attack, that were now to begin. On the 8th the south regiment, moving down the slope of Hill 223 and crossing the level, had reached the ridge beyond in two hours. By 5 P.M. it had fought its way to the possession of a portion of the ridge. Bitterly yielding to the power of the enemy's fire after companies, in characteristic all-America bravery, had lost half their numbers, it retired down the slope during the night to dig itself protection. The north regiment bridged and forded and swam the creek, and fought all day for Cornay and the heights to the westward. The Germans did not depend alone upon fire from the heights. Their machine-gunners were under cover of the bushes and knolls of the bottoms, contesting the passage of the brook, sweeping stretches of its winding course with flanking as well as frontal fire. Their roving field guns attached to battalions fired at point-blank range upon the infantry wave as it appeared on a knoll on the other side of the brook before Cornay, and the men face to face with the gunners bore them down and passed on. By six that afternoon they were in the town and up the slopes of the adjoining heights. There were not enough of them to hold what they had taken. All but forty men of two companies had been killed or wounded in crossing those deadly reaches of the river bottom. As darkness fell, bullets were spattering in every street in Cornay, and pelting down from the crest upon the All-Americas, trying to dig into the slope. Orders had to be given for withdrawal from Cornay and the most exposed ground, for a night of reorganization in the valley of the brook.