The line which it took over from Nantillois to the Beuge Wood was exposed to continual harassing fire. Before it were three bare irregular ridges, surmounted by commanding hills, with woods on the right flank. On the last of the three was the Mamelle trench, a part of the Kriemhilde Stellung. Army ambition, fondly contemplating the freshness and efficiency of the 3rd, saw it driving over those bare ridges, all the while under the guns of the whale-back, past flanking machine-gun fire from the wooded Hill 250 and Cunel Wood on the right. Piercing the Mamelle trench, it was to sink its wedge into the right flank of the whale-back, while the wedge of the 1st was sunk into the left flank. It was the precept of the Army that if you did not order a thing it would not be delivered. One never could tell. The 3rd might do a miracle. It had done something like a miracle on the banks of the Marne. The better a division was, the more was expected of it: which is only logical and human. The open ground on the front was excellently suited for tanks. Forty or fifty would have approached a theoretically adequate number for the division's part in the general attack on October 4th. Unfortunately our troops had had little training in maneuvers with tanks, and the few which the French were able to spare for the 3rd were of relatively little service. For its artillery support, the 3rd had, beside its own brigade, that of the 32nd. This appeared quite generous on paper--but not in sight of those ridges. Their crests should have been ruptured by the high-explosive bursts of half a dozen regiments of heavy artillery, and received a shower-bath of shrapnel from half a dozen regiments of field artillery. However, there was the infantry--we could depend upon the "doughboys" even if we were short of artillery.