If ever infantry needed powerful barrages to protect its swift charges, it was on the morning of the 9th. Any failure to go home at any point might be fatal to the whole movement. As supple as the enemy, the 1st was using roving, or tramp, guns to counter his roving guns. The remainder of the divisional artillery was entirely concentrated in making shields in turn for the right, left, and center, which advanced successively instead of at the same time. The weather as well as the barrages was in our favor. A dense fog hid our waves from the enemy's observation. His machine-gunners in some instances could not see to fire until our men were upon them; in others, as the fog lifted on the exposed targets, our losses were ghastly without staying our progress. Apart from the engineers, the division had only one battalion of fresh infantry in reserve. This battalion was sent against the highest of the hills, 272. Breaking through the fog, in bolt surprise, it took prisoner every man of the garrison of 272 who was not killed. As the curtain of bursting shells of the shield which our men were hugging lifted, the German lieutenant-colonel in command of the hill started out of his dugout, only to see the charge sweeping past its mouth, and, in turn, past all the dugouts where his troops had taken cover from the approaching tornado. He knew that all was lost; and he wept in his humiliation at being captured. It was the first time that the shock division to which he belonged had ever been on the defensive. He paid a soldier's tribute to the power and accuracy of the artillery fire of the 1st, which for two days had marooned him, without food for his men and unable to send them orders or to receive orders from his superior. He had not believed that in five years the Americans would have been able to develop such a division as the 1st; and one's only comment on this is that the men of the 1st were the same kind of men as in the other divisions. He had happened to meet the 1st, as any other division will tell you. German officers who met other divisions in the Argonne held the same view about them. Professional opinions from such experts were worth while. Our attack on Hill 272 on the left and our possession of 269 on the right protecting their flanks, the troops which were making a head-on drive for 263 had an equally brilliant success, thanks to the same thoroughgoing, enterprising, and courageous tactics. Those on the left, with the enemy's plans upset by the loss of 272 and 263, wove their way through the patches of woods, conquering successive machine-gun nests until the Côte de Maldah was theirs in a sweep no less important as a part of the well-arranged whole, though perhaps less sensational. So much for the day's work of the 1st in the high tide of its career on October 9th.